


Gate - 3- The Wheel

by sharkcar



Series: The Bad Sleep Well [13]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Bounty Hunters, Clones, Force Bond (Star Wars), Poverty, Reformed Stormtroopers (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27118748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkcar/pseuds/sharkcar
Summary: An imagining of the lives of clones after the Clone Wars. Just some simple men, making their ways in the universe, in all their tragicomic glory.1- Unrestrained- Cody takes orders from just one person2- Turn- Wolffe takes responsibility3- Carried Away- Rex deals with the undercurrent of remorse
Relationships: Alexsandr Kallus & CT-7567 | Rex, Alexsandr Kallus/CT-7567 | Rex, CC-2224 | Cody/Original Female Character(s), CC-3636 | Wolffe & Original Male Character(s), CC-3636 | Wolffe/Original Female Character(s), CT-7567 | Rex/Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Bad Sleep Well [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1334464
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	1. Unrestrained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Objective, not object

Seven years after the Clone wars, Women’s Reformatory for Criminal Sexual Deviants, Milagro

  


The first time Niki ever killed someone, her day had started out like most of her days. Niki woke up and began screaming at her tormentor. “Nooooooo!”  
  
She could have kept quiet, nobody listened to her anyway. Her protestations never prevented anything from happening to her. But she felt it was important to exert them anyway, just to put the energy out there. She swore sometimes that she’d been able to make things happen. It usually took a lot of energy and a lot of time, so it could have been just coincidence. But her heart told her otherwise. Someday, her will to resist would triumph.  
  
Some men, like this guy, rationalized doing this to her by believing that she deserved it, that she had asked for it, attribute it to something in her tone or her natural sinfulness or her intentional using of herself to make them lustful or whatever. There was nothing she could have done that would have been contrary to their beliefs. And that was only if they felt guilty at all. Most believed this was what she’d been made for.  
  
The big bang from the explosion caused the warden doctor to lose focus on giving her her ‘therapy’.  
  
He got up and left her in the room alone and unrestrained. Niki followed him with her eyes, until he was out of sight. Then she silently got out of the bed and began to search the room for something to use to stab him in the eye.  
  
It was her daily routine, but he hadn’t slipped up yet. The best she’d ever been able to find were things that might strangle him in his sleep. But she wasn’t strong enough to overpower him in a fight she’d come to find. He was a large man and if he caught her trying anything, he would not hesitate to choke her until she passed out. Or sedate her and do whatever he felt like. She had absolutely nothing to lose by trying.  
  
Niki peeked out the door portal to see if he was coming back and saw the warden doctor frozen at his com station. The security camera feeds had him transfixed. She tentatively snuck up behind him, her eyes darting around, looking for something heavy enough to bash his skull in. Then she saw what he was looking at.  
  
Armed troops were moving through every feed. Then screens one by one showed the troops aiming weapons and then each screen just blipped to static. The static seemed to be moving across the wall of screens, like the shadow of a cloud eclipsing the sun.  
  
Just by the way the troops held their guns and walked, Niki knew who they were. The realization lit up every midichlorian in her body, spreading like fire along a trail of fuel. Involuntarily, Niki reacted. She laughed.  
  
The warden pressed the button for internal communications, but found they were jammed. He began to sweat, reeking of panic. Within seconds, they could be heard outside of the door panel. In no more than a breath the armed troops blew in the door and let themselves in. They were led by a man in a helmet Niki immediately recognized.  
  
“Cody!”  
  
\--  
  
Within seconds, the warden was screaming in agony on the floor. Niki watched the abusive prick fade. She stood, looming over him finally, to make sure she was the last big bad thing he ever saw. Then they simply walked out, Niki and the armed troops who were there to rescue her.  
  
“Objective acquired,” Commander Cody spoke into his helmet com and his voice echoed on his squadron’s comlinks.  
  
The troops took no time for celebration, but continued with their pack hunt through the prison, killing every guard droid they encountered. They pulled over the place like a shroud. Most of the Imperial doctors weren’t even awake yet when they were grabbed from their quarters. They were herded into the cell block and forced to their knees, hands behind their heads. They were systematically put into formation, in a regular grid. Like pieces on a game board.  
  
The prisoners were gathered from their cells and from the beds of their captors. The women were gathered at the front of the doctors to face them. Standing on their feet. Those women that couldn’t stand, the troops carried in their arms. The troopers had given them back what remnants of their clothes could be found. They’d also brought foil blankets to keep them warm, which sparkled under the lights.  
  
Niki was conscious of the staging. She had stayed beside Cody, purposefully never falling behind. She had given him his gun back after she shot the warden, but she wanted to keep it within reach in case she saw somebody else who needed to be shot.  
  
Cody wouldn’t even look at her. Niki realized, to her annoyance, that her nakedness was probably making him uncomfortable, the old prude. He only liked naked women if he had them to himself, she remembered. She looked at the clone standing behind her, a clone Niki recognized as Blue from the 21st.  
  
Niki whispered, “Give me your jacket.”  
  
Blue fumbled to remove it. When he did, he very gently laid it over Niki’s shoulders like a butler in a holo-net program. She wriggled into the sleeves. The noise they were making was conspicuous in the still.  
  
Once she had the jacket arranged as strategic cover, Niki stood at the head of the delegation of prisoners, positioning herself ceremoniously, fully aware of the presence she created. She was trembling with her righteous fury with an army at her back. It was thrilling. She was free to be as wicked as she wanted, no one would try to scare her. The power was intoxicating.  
  
Niki’s comrades were watching her. They found comfort in her fearlessness.  
  
Cody removed his helmet and handed it to Blue. All was quiet. His brothers watched him for signs and expressions. On their marks.  
  
“Agents of the Emperor!” Cody began, in his army command voice.  
  
Niki jumped slightly at the voice. This was the first time she’d ever seen clones at work. It was strange to realize there were parts of them she didn’t know.  
  
“You have committed crimes,” Cody stated, not accused.  
  
“On whose authority can you say that! We are government doctors here to treat these women,” the one doctor excused. His authority was somewhat diminished since he’d been caught in bed and was wearing only a shirt without any pants. The building was a former monastery, the architecture was cold.  
  
“This planet had no laws against being with prisoners in custody,” an administrator cited the actual legal situation that Imperials were told when they received their posting orders. That’s why the prison was on Milagro in the first place. Its laws regulating the medical profession were looser than on Coruscant.  
  
Niki scoffed at the bland euphemism. ‘Being with’. Her lekku twitched in the way they did to mean ‘get a load of this fool’. Her fellow prisoners were mostly her species. Some laughed when they saw her make the gesture. Niki hadn’t heard much laughter since she’d been there. It made her feel nice.  
  
Cody paused. He looked down. He looked up. Then stated, “They are crimes against all that is good.”  
  
Blue handed Cody his helmet. He put it on and shot each one in the head in turn. Like it was his job. No fury. No mercy.  
  
Niki realized that all of this was on her account. She couldn’t help but be touched to be counted among the good from someone’s point of view.  
  
–  
  
The heavy canons were loaded back on the freighter and the women were led up into the bridge, where a field hospital had been set up. The ship closed and left Milargro behind them.  
  
Niki’s compatriots were acting grateful to the clones. Niki could afford not to be. She didn’t deserve to be in that nightmarish gulag, so why should she be grateful to people for letting her out? If this was what people heroized, then the bar was low for courage in her estimation. What did they want, medals?  
  
She was lounging on the bridge with the captain’s chair turned around so she could oversee her compatriots.  
  
Cody stood by her chair, looking alongside her. Presumptuous prick.  
  
Niki hadn’t asked permission to kill the warden, but Cody had not stopped her when she took his blaster to do the deed. Her hands were still trembling from the recoil of the weapon. It had scared her.  
  
She looked at the clones in a new light. The men on that ship had probably each killed hundreds of beings, being soldiers and all, because they were told it was their purpose dictated to them from above. Yet, here, Cody gave the order and the troopers systematically coordinated administering medical attention, water and food. Like being gentle was part of their nature.  
  
Niki could smell the familiar bodily musk of Fett embedded in the cloth of the jacket. She was surprised her involuntary reaction was to feel a glow in her heart. Someone who loved her...  
  
Niki would not let her face betray emotion, but she felt a feeling she thought was dead to her.  
  
“Where are we going?” Niki looked at Cody with halfway lowered eyelids, as if looking down at him. She didn’t want to sound scared and confused, the way the question itself might have made her sound.  
  
“Where do you want to go, my dear?” Cody asked, folding his hands in an irritatingly Kenobiesque fashion.  
  
Pompous pricks the both of them, Niki deliberately thought. “I SAID WE, alright!” she hissed through gritted teeth. She didn’t know why he was being like that. Was he trying to make some kind of a show of it? They both knew why he’d rescued her, she thought. She didn’t care for the presumption, but she hated lying more.  
  
She didn’t have to be contrite. She thought most clones standing on that bridge and every woman from that filthy prison would do what she said. His ship might as well have been hers now, his army, her army. She stroked her tchun in a way to indicate she still considered herself in control of the relationship and that he was lucky she was allowing him to have a say.  
  
“I’m going home,” Cody began.  
  
“You have a home? Oh, lucky you,” Niki spat back. Some of the Twi’lek women laughed. Niki smiled, enjoying the sound.  
  
“Would you like to come with me?” Cody asked, on the cusp of condescension.  
  
Niki grew irritated. That was a line she herself had used to solicit clone clients back in the day, proposing they pay to go back to her apartment on Coruscant for the privilege of her private attention. She’d made a ton of money using lines like that. Money she saved and used to take care of herself. She was all she had. Money made her less vulnerable. Although Niki wasn’t ashamed, she read Cody’s phrasing as his being a judgmental little prick for reminding her of her past. They both knew he’d taken her up on her offer enough times. His saying it that way she read as him trying to be sentimental. Men always thought everything they did was romantic instead of creepy.  
  
He bowed at the waist a little, “Um...glad to see you.” He seemed to be offering a figurative hand in truce.  
  
Her lekku gesture figuratively slapped the hand away. But didn’t bite it. Not yet.  
  
–  
  
Rishi

  


Much to Niki’s chagrin, Cody was able to speak to her alone eventually.  
  
She was taking a breather from all the attention her arrival in the colony had elicited. She’d said she needed to find a toilet and just kept walking. She’d seen a rope bridge over the canyon when they’d arrived and she wanted to see where it led. On the other side of the gorge, there was a small cemetery.  
  
People from their little group had already died there, it looked like. Niki sat down and took just a moment to process everything, from the moment she woke that morning to that place in that moment.  
  
So of course, he intruded.  
  
“I guess I should have expected to find someone holding your leash,” Niki frowned at him, “I was a fool to think you’d do something for other people on your own.”  
  
Cody kept a couple of meters between them, “I don’t know if I’d call that a leash. A voluntary binding of some kind.” He fiddled with a ring he was wearing on his finger. Niki had seen Lina had a matching one, once she took off her gloves to eat.  
  
Niki wasn’t sure what she’d thought was going to happen, but she’d been so sure about Cody and what this gesture meant. She didn’t know why it mattered. The last time she’d seen him, she’d told him she didn’t like him. She’d meant it then.  
  
When she’d rejected him he’d told her sex for money was all she was good for. She knew he hadn’t meant it, but back then he was still a man who let his anger allow him to hurt others when he was feeling hurt. A man like that was not someone she could have in her life.  
  
When did her impression of him change? What did she care what he wanted?  
  
“You came to get me because SHE told you to?” Niki accused.  
  
“We’re sorry it wasn’t sooner. At first we weren’t even sure we’d survive,” Cody explained. “But we got tired of waiting to be massacred so we have tried to build something. Of course we decided right away you had to be a part of it. You’re a natural leader,” Cody informed her.  
  
No one had ever told her that before. Niki grew angry. She knew it. She’d always known it. She knew other people must have realized it, but withheld the compliment to belittle her. Or tried to shut her up because she was competition.  
  
Cody had his hands folded behind his back, at ease, not attention. “We’re trying to make something here, a different way of doing things. We want to make a place that takes care of the people who need it most. You’ve always believed we should do that. And your experiences are important.”  
  
“Why? Because I’m one of those people who most needs taking care of?” Niki realized right away that she was letting herself become enraged.  
  
“Because of what you’ve risen above. We need you,” Cody had never been passionate by any stretch, at least not outwardly. But he was looking at her. And it made her feel things.  
  
“We need? What about you need?” Niki was suspicious. Few people had ever needed her in more than a physical way, at least not that they ever let her know.  
  
Cody surprised her, “I hope you’ll forgive me.”  
  
“And what do you think you’ve done?” Niki knew Fett expressions. He felt things. She knew he did.  
  
He surprised her, “When I first met you, I was ten years old and never seen anywhere but that damned facility. I was an ass.”  
  
She surprised him. She’d had years to think about things, too, “I didn’t hate you for me. Lots of people have treated me the way you did. I hated you for how you treated Wolffe. That man was worth so much. You had no idea how much he loved you.”  
  
Cody’s expression meant she had found something that really made him feel things. “I know that now, don’t I? I just did the one thing in the universe I am positive he’d ask me for if he were here.”  
  
That night, Niki went to sleep in her secure room, alone safe in her bed and slept as long as she wanted.  
  
\--  
  
Eriadu- Twenty years after the war-

  


Nelli was sitting on the floor of the Tarkin Family’s ground floor kitchen in a corner, peeling vegetables and putting them in a bucket for the cooks. She wasn’t using her own knife. Kitchen tools had to be issued and checked back in every day. The servants’ barracks were not allowed weapons. Not even forks. She missed having her own knife. She missed being trusted with things instead of being treated like a child or a less-than-human.  
  
Her usual routine with that task was to say a little rhyme in her head, like recitation of a song. It was just a little traditional dialogue where the singer was the protagonist. The plot was simple, she was just a girl asking a big fish not to bite her. The little poem was directed at the knife. Nelli’s mommy had taught it to her back in her village when she’d taught her how to peel. Reciting it over and over helped her to stay concentrated on the task so that she was less likely to cut herself.  
  
Tarkin’s guard were talking together in Eriadan at a table nearby. Nelli didn’t like those bullies, but they talked loud. Their village dialects were close enough to her own that Nelli understood.  
  
“...AND THEN I’M GOING FISHING!”  
  
They all erupted in laughter.  
  
Nelli needed to know what it was all about. She loved funny stories. She leaned in closer, but silenced her protection spell. She immediately nicked her finger, which she knew was because she had recited imperfectly. She sucked on her thumb and perked up her ears.  
  
“No way!” one of the younger guards asked in astonishment.  
  
The guard telling the story held up his hand, “Right to his face!”  
  
“His Highness, I ain’t never seen him like that, I thought he was gonna puke,” the guard captain was able to hazard a little light blasphemy about their ruler. It made him seem badass in front of his men. He’d been in the room at the time, so he was lordly with authority on the subject. “The Grand Moff was on a holo-transmission with the Emperor himself! Now His Excellency didn’t react, he’s probably too senile, I’m sure he doesn’t speak Eriadan. But it was funny.”  
  
Nelli thought many of those words sounded funny, since most of them were Basic loan words. Nelli didn’t know the meanings of those words translated into concrete things.  
  
“Who was he?” the young guy asked.  
  
“We captured him on Iego. Some of the other guys were talking about it. I guess they heard a rumor this guy was wanted by the Empire for calling himself a king,” the captain whispered, but loudly enough to be heard.  
  
Nelli had heard that word before, ‘king’.  
  
She had never heard of such a thing except on those cheap fantasy holo-novelas about far off lands or long ago times that the rest of the servants watched back at the barracks. All that silliness about queens, and knights. Who even were those people? People who lived like Tarkin, but who weren’t horrible? Nelli was fascinated whether this fishing king actually existed.  
  
“Is he what the droids are guarding in the old gate house?” the younger guard asked.  
  
“The old grounds keeper’s place? I guess, I thought they would have executed him by now. Maybe they’re holding him because he’s supposed to go back to Coruscant for a trial. Someone they can make an example of, parade him around on the holo-net. Makes no difference, he’s probably just a mentally deranged cult leader that bullied some of his neighbors into calling him king.”  
  
“So what is he supposed to be king of?” a guard asked.  
  
“The kark I know from galactic geography?” the captain responded.  
  
\--  
  
Nelli was a servant in the Tarkin household. Nothing specialized. Just an all purpose ‘do-stuff’, as her people called it. There were thousands of people on staff in the villa, her job was the lowest pay grade, a charity case that the servants let stay and help out in exchange for a safe place to sleep and some left over food. She was quiet and obedient so people always had things they could order her to do.  
  
She had been born in a subsistence farming village deep in the rainforests of Eriadu’s northern hemisphere. Her entire body of knowledge about the universe was handed down by the collective ancestors of her society. Everybody knew how to do just about everything that living there required. Shelter was easy to build from sturdy reeds. It cost nothing to replace a roof or wall, just a few hours hacking at the vegetation. People would help you, since you helped them when they needed it. Growing food was easy, the rainforest plants were productive. The villagers helped things along by planting groves of food trees nearer their settlements, clearing land for them by burning off the undergrowth between trees. Ground plants could replace themselves quickly. They planted favored foods in higher numbers, particularly carbohydrate grains and fruits. Ground birds and rodents were attracted to stay close to the village if some seedy grains were kept strewn about, then they’d stay near, eating on cooking scraps and be easy to cull from for protein. They built terraces, which caught and directed water. They purposefully brought fish in baskets from the rivers below and put them in the flooded terraces, to catch later. Everything they needed was there. Most people never left the mountain slope.  
  
Nelli’s entire life, she had been prepared for the only life all of the people she knew could imagine. Her skill set was entirely devoted to a way of life adapted to an environment that had always been the way it was since humans there could remember  
  
The world Nelli knew was vanishing. Eriadu had been claimed by people millions of light years away by the governing body that ruled the galaxy on its own authority . On Eriadu, they set up a ruling house, the local family that was most likely to be loyal to the Republic. The Tarkins then gave the Republic free rein to take the world’s resources, while the family benefited from the trade financially. The planet was being rapidly polluted with mining and heavy industry since even Republic times and intensified under the Empire.  
  
The people of Eriadu had nothing to say about how they were governed. It wasn’t like an authoritarian government, where the charade had to be kept up that the leader was elected, this was closer to absolute monarchy, although day to day the distinction barely mattered. Nelli’s people, who the Tarkins had been given to rule over had no familiarity with either concept. They had always governed by what was more or less the law of family because they rarely saw anyone else.  
  
In her village, no one pretended everyone was equal, but the group was small. Everyone could hope to have a say. Everyone could contribute in some way. The sick or disabled were cared for, because what else would you do for family?  
  
Nelli had been born with an extra twenty-first chromosome, which her people sourced to some kind of unseen magic. They never made a judgment call about the nature of such forces, good or evil. They just were. The supernatural obeyed its own laws. That was all they ever needed as an explanation for it. Memory was long in the village. They’d seen people like Nelli before. It didn’t hinder her much at home. She did get made fun of, but so did everybody else. Among the people of her own village, she was loved.  
  
Then the fire came. A fire so big it destroyed the trees. It burned for days, the smoke filling their lungs even when they couldn’t feel the heat. The sky turned orange by day, the color of smoke by night.  
  
Nelli and the other people that could run had run. They started down the path towards the next village. They were greeted by skeletons scorched carbon black. They turned and went the other direction. The next village, most of them had never been to before. They didn’t know any people there. The place was in chaos as people were grabbing what they could carry and fleeing. Nelli and the others from her village silently followed, joining what would become a growing caravan snaking its way down the mountain. On the trip, one by one, everyone who had been with her from home had died. Just fell where they’d been walking. Or didn’t wake up in the morning. Nelli wasn’t sure what to do next. People had always told her before.  
  
Then, the ships came. Nelli followed the crowd and they were brought to a refugee center outside Eriadu City. There, their large group tried to find what work they could. For women on their own, there were only certain jobs they were permitted to do. Gather fruit in public places and sell it on for small coin to people who wanted to save the trouble. Prostitution in alleys and walls near the city gates. Sweeping out people’s entryways and stairwells. Begging. A combination. Whatever it took to fill mouths and bellies. The city people seemed to know what was going on. But Nelli couldn’t read in any language. She didn’t understand Galactic Basic. At least the public water was clean.  
  
Nelli grew accustomed to following a herd of dirty starving people to the Tarkin family compound to dig at their trash outside the kitchen entrance. One morning, the estate was hosting an important Imperial visitor at short notice, so the beggar women were made to wash themselves out in the courtyard and then set to work.  
  
Nelli kept quiet and always looked busy. Her appearance moved some to pity, so they let her stay. Nobody ever paid attention to her. She hoped they wouldn’t. When they did, something bad usually happened. She’d been there a few years. She had seen Tarkin and how he lived. Servants were not allowed to be in the same room with the family. Except his guards and the security droids. Cleaners had to wait until he left. Fixing up the rooms like fairy folk. They knew better than to steal. The house guards had no problem beating the servant women on Tarkin’s command.  
  
Nelli’s only cover against the downpour of uncertainty that plagued her life was her belief in magic.  
  
In her village, superstitions and omens were the stuff of their daily lives. No one in her previous life would ever doubt the unseen forces guiding their destinies. That such powers could be affected by people through words or action was taken for granted.  
  
Nelli’s people usually expressed their beliefs in customs that were intended to bring good luck and ward off the bad. She had carried these as a part of her routine with her from her predictable home and practiced them still as a comfort. Attempting to bring her wishes to reality provided Nelli with a much needed source of hope.  
  
–  
  
“You write?” Nelli asked the droid who delivered the frozen fish at the back door.  
  
It clicked back in the affirmative.  
  
Nelli had come to find, with droids, they were not curious. You could safely ask them a question and they didn’t suspect why you wanted to know a thing. The way people did. No amount of minding her own business and working hard ever saved her from harassment by humans. People went to her bosses and criticized her behind her back for no good reason. Trying to get her fired and thrown out of the compound to fend for herself on the streets of the capital just because the look of her frightened them.  
  
It was dangerous doing what she intended to do, so she took precautions.  
  
She mumbled to the droid, “You write.” She had not said anything different in words, but different in tone.  
  
But the droid was not high sentience enough to understand the difference of tone between the interrogative and the imperative, they were both equal possibilities. So, since it had already answered affirmatively, the droid assumed that it must perform the task.  
  
The droid clicked a sound that meant a question.  
  
“Help me,” Nelli insisted.  
  
The droid took the sentence as literally as possible, as droids were wont to do when their translation programming got confused. It wrote the words on a scrap of paper and went about its business.  
  
\--  
  
Nelli went down the garden pathway carrying a basket. She had mumbled that she was going to gather some leaves they’d stuff for a dish that was in season. No one paid much attention. The task took a period of time that was flexible. She would gather the leaves before she went back inside, if anyone needed to check.  
  
She exited the back kitchen door towards the patch of terrace wall where the villa guards went to have a piss. Then she took off down a gravel path through manicured patches of grass and topiary of the palace gardens. She was startled a few times by the stone sculptures. The garden looked like a cemetery to her.  
  
Nelli chanted a simple prayer to ward off harmful spirits. Her hands had frozen around the handle of the basket. She broke into a cold sweat as she went over it in her mind. She could claim she had come this way by mistake, or that someone had ordered her to go and retrieve supplies for them and she got lost. Or if they didn’t believe her, that she was looking for a place to drink the stolen bottle.  
  
Nelli reached the grounds keeper’s house and was immediately approached by the droids.  
  
One halted her and said in Basic, “State your purpose.”  
  
Basic was the language used by wealthy people on Eriadu. Therefore, it was held in reverence by those they lorded over. Most people understood at least a few phrases.  
  
Nelli mumbled one of the few things she knew to say in this language through the spaces in her mouth where teeth had been. “I bring.” She didn’t understand what the droids were saying back to each other.  
  
One droid turned to the other, and nodded yes.  
  
Nelli understood that.  
  
The other held up a mechanical hand in a halting gesture, palm up facing out. It shook its head and said in Basic.  
  
Nelli understood it as reticence.  
  
Nelli insisted, “I bring!”  
  
The droids did not react. The tendency was, with droid programming, an undisputed fact wouldn’t be challenged. And as she had clearly brought something, they did not compute anything as being off. Their sentience programming did not think to question why she was there and what her intentions were. Their programming did not figure in things like turn of phrase, approximate translations, or the fact that Nelli had learned that droids were easily confused when you were speaking broken Basic.  
  
She handed the droid the wine and gestured at the shack. The droid took the bottle and opened the door. Nelli closely observed the pattern of the combination it punched into the door’s key panel. She didn’t know her numbers, so she was always extremely observant of digit placement.  
  
The sliding door and set the bottle of farmer wine inside the door. Behind, she just caught a glimpse of him, sleeping on the floor with his back to the entrance.  
  
He had the scars of a brigand, but his back looked strong. Like a guy who worked hard.  
  
The door shut and Nelli quit while she was ahead. She scuttled back to the garden, to the vines with the leaves to stuff. Absolutely nobody had noted that anything was out of the ordinary.  
  
But Nelli felt changed. What she’d seen, that person they’d been telling stories about. She’d seen him. That man who people were saying was a king.  
  
–  
  
Cody was still recovering from the torture. The bottle that had appeared in his room had helped him to feel better. He hadn’t had an alcoholic beverage in years. The low percentage of alcohol therefore had set him right into dreamless sleep. Rest, more than anything, had really helped him to feel stronger. Cody knew what his visit from Lord Sideous was about. He couldn’t be sure the Old Man was still in the place he’d left him, but Cody didn’t want to risk allowing His Lord to know. Through his years of practice and training, Cody had been able to banish remembering it for a time. If he could find the will, he’d die before he let Sideous know. So far he had been able to, but he’d gotten lucky. Something had spooked his tormentor. But as long as he was stuck where they could find him, tormentors would be back to search his mind again. Only a matter of time.  
  
Cody worried he was running out of things to think about. Therefore, it was a welcome diversion to have something to wonder at.  
  
Whoever had stuck that little note on the bottom of the bottle obviously couldn’t help him openly. They must be pretty desperate to be asking him for help, he was the one in a prison being tortured. He tried to imagine someone who might feel even more alone than him.  
  
He didn’t have a choice about action. He had no ability to do anything but wait.  
  
–  
  
The next day Nelli headed out there, she dared to bring a little food with the drink. She was feeling emboldened by how well it had gone the time before.  
  
The droids had already registered her previous answer, so they didn’t ask her to once again state her purpose. “You bring?” one droid waved.  
  
Nelli obeyed it like an imperative, pointing at her basket for emphasis, “I bring. You guard.” She then walked right by them to the door herself.  
  
Droids really were very literal. The problem was, language was governed by different rules than they could learn. As the fact was indisputable that they were in the act of guarding, they registered ‘you guard’ as a simple predicate nominative construction. Indeed, they were guard droids. It confirmed their programmed orders as well, they had been told to guard. They didn’t register something humans might find suspicious, like how humans considered it stupid to state the obvious. So they just went on guarding.  
  
Nelli punched in the door code she had observed the day before. The droids logically assumed she wouldn’t have it if she wasn’t supposed to. Therefore, to her utter amazement, she found herself standing in the door portal looking straight at ‘the king’.  
  
The man was just sitting on the floor.  
  
Nelli realized she hadn’t thought of anywhere to hide.  
  
Then he did something she didn’t expect. He smiled. Not a predatory or sadistic smile. But a gentle smile. The smile of a person who is almost...shy. “Hello there.”  
  
“All I have to do is scream,” she whispered. She noticed him looking at her, not in the eyes, but at her neck. She had pinned her veil at the back of her neck to show it. Not that anybody had ever noticed.  
  
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he explained plainly. The guards were right, he spoke their language. “But, if I’m not mistaken, you asked me for help. Didn’t you?”  
  
“How do you know our speech,” she asked in a whisper.  
  
“From my wife. She speaks it with our children,” Cody informed her.  
  
“Your children speak it?” Nelli liked children.  
  
“Yes, with too much of my accent, I’m afraid. But we live around my family, so it’s understandable.”  
  
“No, you speak it beautifully,” Nelli had not liked a man this much in years.  
  
–  
  
Eriadan people had traditionally been very conservative in code of dress. A woman’s hair was her own, intentionally uncovering her was understood in their culture as an act of sexual violence. Still, unveiling was a common way to harass women on the streets of the sprawling capital city. Ostensibly, the religiously conservative society did not accept forcible unveiling, but it was often done when men thought nobody they knew was looking. Just as they might pinch an ass in passing or pretend to run into a girl so they could pretend to brace themselves by putting their hands on her chest. To pull off her scarf was as humiliating for her as lifting her skirt or shirt.  
  
A mail order service, a subsidiary of the Concordia Spice Co. sold a variety of hair band that could be worn under the veil, with a glass vial that was made to break apart if ripped, spraying the wearer and her attacker with a type of staining dye. This identified perpetrators and publicly shamed them. The devices were not technically legal under the Tarkin regime, but they were common enough in city bodegas that everyone knew what that dye looked like splattered on skin and hair. That had entered popular culture by means of the jokes everybody spread around. Men were publicly shamed for their private behavior for perhaps the first time in their lives.  
  
The slogan printed on the product packaging was, ‘Protect yourself like money.’ That had been Niki’s contribution. Queen Lina/Concordia was the model on the box. Niki slipped ads for them into the Eriadan language fashion periodicals she published for the local market as propaganda. Since men never read those things, Niki knew it was a means to spread ideologies and knowledge on the queen’s behalf. It had always been important to Lina that she do something for her original home world. Under the brutal regime of the Tarkin family, it was really in a state.  
  
\--  
  
Nelli told the man her story.  
  
“It was the son. He was drunk and horny and he couldn’t get out of the family compound without his father knowing, so he found the gate locked. It was hot that night, so I was sleeping in the courtyard. He decided a do-stuff was the next best thing. I woke up with him on top of me, covering my mouth. I grabbed my own veil and ripped it. He got the dye full in the eyes like a black mask. I laughed. He punched two teeth out of my head when I laughed. I screamed. The whole house woke up. They came out and found him there, pants around his ankles, covered in dye, screaming and covering his eyes. I was on the ground, my mouth full of blood, exposed, screaming curses. His father decided, the best solution was to get him married, but they haven’t found a wife yet, so he’s around here all day. The dye is fading now, but I still want people to see. Nothing’s changed for me,” she wept angrily. “This is the worst my life’s ever been and I don’t see how it will get better.”  
  
Cody nodded and put his palm to his heart to swear an oath, “Whatever happens to me, I’ll not leave you here. I’ve got to save you.”  
  
–  
  
Rishi

  


Niner knocked, then the door panel slid open, revealing Niki, the Prime Ministra seated in her ostentatious chair. It had roaring felines as arm rests and sharp horns sticking up from the back. Niner had heard she had a button on the handle that could make flames flare up behind her.  
  
Niner marched into the office, hat under his arm. He was in his newly tailored captain uniform, trying to develop a personal style to make himself stand out. He’d spent so much time in front of the mirror that morning, his fellow lodgers at the rest house had given him a time of it about being a total Captain Rex. In clone terms, that meant he was kind of a peacock.  
  
Niki stood to receive him, she raised her hand to hold it out in greeting.  
  
Her official title was Prime Ministra, but Niner couldn’t help himself, he took her hand and kissed the back, “My Lady,” he said quietly.  
  
She indicated the chair in front of her desk, without seeming very impressed.  
  
Niner sat and placed the datapad before her, showing off his new gold ring, the intaglio on the shamelessly large bezel showed him kicking an Imperial captain. Of course it didn’t impress her, he thought, annoyed at himself. She was wearing a small fortune in diamonds on her neck.  
  
“Is that the expense report from Iego?” Niki indicated the datapad.  
  
“Just typed it up,” Niner had added Cody’s name so that he wouldn’t get in trouble. Brothers always covered for each other, that was their original social code from back on Kamino.  
  
Niki picked it up and speed read the contents. She grew annoyed when she saw the fake signature. She didn’t mind the dishonesty as much as she minded someone assuming she’d fall for their stupid nonsense. Then she looked up, “And where is his worshipfulness this morning? I need to talk to him about something.”  
  
“Uh...I haven’t seen him,” Niner answered honestly. “He got his own ride back from Iego, I guess. That’s what he said.”  
  
“Probably went straight home,” Niki didn’t look concerned. Cody usually came back from field missions horny.  
  
Niner whispered slyly, “I come bringing a message from Sotna.”  
  
“Sotna! You saw her?” Niki forgot everything else.  
  
“She’s fine,” Niner scratched the back of his neck. Having this much of Niki’s attention was intimidating. “She took command of ‘The Doashim’. I wiped all its records before. Sotna is in the company of some high level Imperial officers under her assumed identity. They don’t suspect a thing.”  
  
“Is that all?” Niki lowered her lids as if to look down at him.  
  
“She says to tell you she said you’re an amazing mom,” Niner responded carefully.  
  
“She said to tell you she said,” Niki looked incredulous.  
  
“She was rather specific,” Niner considered.  
  
“She wants me to know she’s telling me what I want to hear,” Niki explained the subtext.  
  
Niner breathed in and out through his nose. He realized that maybe sincerity would be a better approach with Niki. “She really saved our skins out there, we were just flying around with these Imperials not sure what to do. She’s so clever.”  
  
That made Niki smile.  
  
He went in for the compliment, “Just like you.”  
  
“That’s sweet of you to say,” Niki was still reserved.  
  
“Listen...I’m having a housewarming party for my new place. The guys and I are moving out of the rest house. Would you like to come? I understand if you can’t but...” Niner hazarded.  
  
Niki nodded and committed all she could, “I’ll try. I really will.”  
  
–  
  
Late that night, Niki quietly snuck out to the village bird coop after everyone had gone to bed and the garden was dark. Niki could hear them cluck. She conducted her opening ritual.  
  
Cody’s ill tempered tooka slunk in and jumped onto one of the stall doors for a vantage to watch.  
  
Niki breathed deeply and closed her eyes and waited. She felt herself calm. She reached out an arm in front of her, fingers extended. She pictured energy extending from her hand, like a glowing rope. She concentrated on one of the creatures. On its feathers, the warmth of its skin beneath, beneath that, the muscles of its neck. Slowly, Niki pictured the rope form a coil delicate as a thread. Very, very slowly, so as not to break the thread, Niki pulled, moving her fingers to indicate her intention. A vibration of resistance occurred. Then another. Niki held. Then suddenly, she heard the sickening crack.  
  
She opened her eyes to find the bird dead at her feet.  
  
The tooka’s eyes widened in panic and it ran as if it had heard thunder.  
  
Niki looked at her own hand. “I...like you.”  
  
–  
  
Mustafar

  


Darth Vader hung in his bacta tank, healing himself as much as he would ever heal. The chemicals helped, but mostly it was up to him to heal himself the only way he could, through his own strength.  
  
Jedi could heal. Some of them, anyway. Not everyone had the power, but it had existed. It was a power that one needed to use the light side to access. Like much Force manipulation, it was merely a speeding up of a process. Parlor tricks like making plants sprout and flower hadn’t interested young Anakin. He could do them, but he just didn’t want to. The plants would grow in their own time anyway, and they’d be better growing their own way. As individuals. The former slave in him decided that was better.  
  
A plant was still a plant, not something that had never existed before. It wasn’t the same as making something out of nothing. Something that was exactly how you wanted it to be.  
  
Anakin Skywalker had been raised by a religious scholar, so he was well read in the material whether he wanted to be or not. Jedi teachings had claimed that the act of creation was considered too much power for one person to possess. There was some philosophical reasoning behind it. Like the creator of the universe had made an inviolable order and only he had the right. There had been debates about it in the past. And metaphors and texts composed to explain one position or another. And atrocities committed over one side or another. And wars. And religious movements for or counter, with resulting purges of the losing side of ideological debates gone wrong.  
  
Vader still remembered there was some interesting bits embedded in all the boring debates. For instance about the reason the Jedi forbid the making of children.  
  
The logic was that the young were then open to manipulation. The very young had no way to defend themselves from parents’ wills, no matter how mature the child might grow to be. The temptation for Force wielders would be to create, then govern the child with mind control. It was sometimes so subtle, they didn’t even realize, or admit to themselves that they were doing it. Or necessarily want to stop.  
  
In historical examples, some justified it. Some enjoyed it. Paths to the dark were opened.  
  
Sith creed seemed to dictate that if they ever had the chance to reproduce children on their own, they would only make slaves. Therefore, ancient Jedi policy on fighting Sith was, if you can’t kill, render them scarred and inept. Obi-Wan had been quite thorough.  
  
To heal himself what little he could, with only the Dark Side at his disposal, Vader had to summon all of his strength through negative emotions. He would make himself feel things on the inside, the only way he still could feel. Like training for sport, working his way up with pain by piling on heavier weights.  
  
Anakin’s pains had dulled over time, like tissue in a scar. It was why Vader craved connections with other people, to find new miseries to ponder.  
  
He called out through the Force, looking for his new apprentice.  
  
–  
  
Rishi  
  
Niki went to bed that night the way she did most nights. Alone and with a clear conscience on sheets so clean and pure they shone like crystal.  
  
Still her tormentor found her. First she caught a whiff of something...bacta...burning sulfur. Her hands were trembling. Niki knew he was in her head by force. She refused to react. Like getting control of vomit during a hangover. She breathed deeply in and out. She opened her eyes to try to wake from it like a dream. But her room was dark and her body was caught in sleep paralysis.  
  
He couldn’t see where she was, she didn’t think. Nevertheless, the impact of the feeling his presence doubled her over with a glassy abdominal cramp.  
  
“No,” she pleaded. Genuinely afraid. Using her emotions in her outward performance.  
  
‘Kill,’ Vader thought for her.  
  
“I don’t take orders from you,” she was aware he was there and separate from her thoughts. That made her stronger willed than most. Most people would have told themselves they were dreaming or hearing things.  
  
‘You want to kill,’ he told her the truth.  
  
“Every woman wants to kill. Men are very enraging,” she made herself laugh through the pain.  
  
‘You want to kill just to take,’ he told her the truth. ‘You love the power.’  
  
‘Oh here we go,’ she thought to herself. Men always thought they understood everything.  
  
‘I can give you what you want,’ he hissed.  
  
Niki desperately wanted to sever the connection. “Only you can…,” she wasn’t sure if she was convincing. She concentrated on feeling love to make her performance for her abuser seem loving. She thought of Wolffe’s arms around her, not in restraint but gentle and reverent.  
  
Vader invaded her thoughts, ‘Your clones cannot protect you.’ Vader had encountered her with two of them. He knew she was connected to them somehow, but it was still bothering him that he couldn’t recall how he knew her. He could sense she was extremely wise and adept. But he couldn’t remember anyone powerful who had any connection to the soldiers besides Lord Sideous. He thought he could draw her into reacting. To taunt her, he thought of the clones he had in his lab. Connected with their pain, then threw the experience at her. ‘Love won’t save you,’ his presence seemed to scream.  
  
Niki was overwhelmed with nausea. She knew that was just a small amount of his power. He could kill her easily with no more than a thought. Niki had never seen that kind of control exerted. She realized there was a lot she would do to make him stop.  
  
Suddenly an alarm rang, forming a crack of light that woke her from his thrall. Then the alarm was silenced as if someone had punched in the proper code to turn it off.  
  
Niki sat up confused. Only two other beings had free access to her quarters. And Cody was off world. Niki’s daughter was on her way to Coruscant. Even before she opened her door panel to see who, she sensed. The emotional state radiating from this person seemed to form a vortex.  
  
The Queen of Abrion was there. Lina’s eyes were wide with concern, “Cody’s missing.”


	2. Turn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wolffe tries to man up

Coruscant, second year of the war.  
  
“I don’t speak droid, but Rex said that I’d be surprised to know how many dick jokes that Artoo unit makes in an average work day. I’d feel sexually harassed if he actually had a dick to threaten me with. But he’s got a buzz saw and rocket boosters, so maybe a dick isn’t the worst way to come in contact with him, anyway. But Kenobi said it was just because the droid talked like General Skywalker talks when no one else is around. I’ve heard him out working on his ship. So that checks out, I guess...”  
  
“Baby, alright!” Niki had finally had enough.  
  
They were to their destination and she was trying to wrest herself from his verbal grip.  
  
“I’ll see you back at home later, okay?” she kissed his mouth to shut him up and took the chance to run for an air taxi.  
  
Wolffe slowly approached the entrance of the bar. He wasn’t much in past the door. He looked around the day crowd at 79’s. The bar was darker than it was outside. But warm, while the outside was cold. In his current mood, both options felt annoying enough to make him want to chew his own hand off.  
  
Wolffe scanned the room for a group of brothers who wouldn’t irritate him too much. But they all seemed to disgust him with the sight of himself. He didn’t want to be with them. He wanted to be with his girl.  
  
SHE had told him he couldn’t go with her and that made him feel things against his will.  
  
Who did she want to be with if not him? He knew better than to say that to her. It was jealous. She wouldn’t allow jealousy. But the fact that she didn’t want to be with him when he wanted to be with her was painful and he wasn’t sure what to do with the feeling that had manifested inside him. He was left clenching and unclenching his fists involuntarily.  
  
Drinking was the first option he came up with, since it was the easiest available thing that was certain to change his state of mind. Wolffe couldn’t help but notice that seemed to be on purpose. There weren’t many places his Fett ass was technically allowed to be or things he was supposed to be doing, or people he was allowed to interact with. Legally, he wasn’t even allowed in the store with Niki, all she was doing was going to buy shoes. His presence alongside her was against the law. If he went, she might be thrown in jail too. But drinking at the clone bar was always permitted.  
  
If that was on purpose that meant someone had made it that way. Someone who hated him.  
  
Wolffe thought about things like that. It made him mad sometimes. Most brothers just took life as it came. They took things for granted as they were, most of his brothers couldn’t see how things added up like that. Nor did they care. Nor did they need to, for all they could change about it.  
  
Wolffe sighed at his brothers. Talking in circles about the things they always talked about. Drinking until the room was spinning. Enough to make him nauseated.  
  
So Wolffe took the decisive step to turn and go back out the portal.  
  
If it had been nice out, Wolffe might have been able to think of a prank, but the day was cloudy and drizzly. That made him too lacking in energy to even think of one, never mind execute.  
  
He looked around the entrance platform as speeders whizzed by. A random thought surfaced. If he were to take one misstep, he’d explode like sausage in the express cooker. He found he could imagine it perfectly like a scene in an animated holo-vid. Although, in practical experience, he knew he wouldn’t see his own death from that point of view. He was sure he’d just be switched off like a machine.  
  
He desperately needed to get out of his own head and feed on somebody else’s energy.  
  
The street girls were outside, as usual. They were talking very loudly and laughing. Wolffe decided to go to them.  
  
“Hey baby, you looking for a date?” the Rodian asked.  
  
“Nah, I guess not right this moment,” Wolffe was looking to improve his mood, but he didn’t think awkward alley sex would make him feel better about himself. Not like being with Niki did. “You guys mind if I hang out?”  
  
“It’s a free world,” the Askajian shrugged.  
  
–  
  
Wolffe had been listening to music on his player pod. His heart was hurting, so he felt like singing. In order not to seem to full of himself, Wolffe sang like it was a joke. But as he sang more, and they laughed and smiled, he grew more confident in the joke well received. Then he hazarded more effort. Then at the end the ladies actually applauded. So of course, Wolffe was instantly addicted. He sang a song dedicated to each of them. They laughed more. Applauded more. The Siniteen girl went for tea to keep their hands warm. She got Wolffe one too.  
  
He set his player pod to record and began to speak into it to the ladies present. Eywa, Fanda, and Eleese, a Rodian, an Askajian, and a Siniteen, respectively.  
  
“Okay, here is Commander the Wolffe at 79’s, reporting on the situation in the street. Ladies?”  
  
Eywa shrugged, which didn’t show up on the recording of course, “So how’s the war going?”  
  
“Same as always, I guess. We shoot, they shoot back,” Wolffe wanted to talk of other things.  
  
“So what are you recording?” Fanda asked, looking over the rim of her cup.  
  
Wolffe didn’t want to seem too sentimental, “Just stuff. So tell me ladies, how do you get into this line of work?”  
  
Eleese lit up a death stick, “A steady progression of bad choices.”  
  
“What about you? How did you end up a soldier?” Eywa looked around at Wolffe’s brothers, who were coming and going.  
  
“A steady progression of no choices. I was made for it,” Wolffe explained.  
  
Fanda tsked like she felt sorry for him, “Sounds bad. Even I had a few good years before this.”  
  
Wolffe was very curious about their lives, “So what do you girls do when you’re not here? Any hobbies?”  
  
The women laughed at him. Most people they met knew just what they were on sight. And why they did the work they did in the way they did. They were extremely poor and they needed drugs. They weren’t much particular about what they did to get them. There might have been less powerful people in the universe, but not by much.  
  
Eywa rolled her eyes and said in a voice that was sarcastic, “Sure. I like knitting.”  
  
Wolffe wasn’t sure why she’d be sarcastic about it. He loved crafts.  
  
Fanda seemed serious, “I spend time with my kid. He’s in the state boy’s home.”  
  
Wolffe was fascinated by family relationships, “You got a kid? What’s that like?”  
  
Fanda joked, “You know, regular people, only smaller.”  
  
Wolffe was glad to find a topic. He hated it when his recordings went boring, “I held a baby once.”  
  
“Really?” Eleese sounded like she was indulging a child.  
  
Wolffe nodded, “It was actually Rodian, Eywa. My buddy had to run in the store and he asked if I could watch her for a minute. Those funny suction cup fingers were so tiny.”  
  
Fanda had never seen many men be gentle with babies, or be willing to even hold them. They were promptly handed back to their mothers for cleaning and affection where she came from, “What did you do with it?”  
  
Wolffe shrugged, “Just held her. I talked to her a little, like in a silly voice. She smiled, I think.” It was hard for him to tell. Mouth structure on Rodians was different than for humans.  
  
Eleese giggled, “I cannot picture that.”  
  
“You’ve seen babies,” Wolffe didn’t know why everyone couldn’t think in pictures as clearly as he could.  
  
Eleese flicked away the spent death stick. “I just can’t picture anyone letting one of you clones near one.” In the context where she saw soldiers, they were usually drunk and behaving badly. She mostly believed the rumor that they were small brained. Since humans generally were to her.  
  
“Ha! That confused me, too,” Wolffe sipped his tea.  
  
\--  
  
It was morning when his personal com unit chirped.  
  
Wolffe was on leave, so hung over, as usual. He had slept in a shirt, no pants. His pubic hair was crusty. He resisted the urge to scratch at it, instead searching through the discarded clothes for his belt with the com pouch.  
  
Niki didn’t stir. The sheets still had smears of whatever red condiment product he’d slathered her in. Her eye makeup streaked down her face horrifically from the active sweat she’d worked up on him the night before.  
  
Wolffe surveyed his kingdom with pride and hit the comlink switch, “Yeeeeeeeeeeeees?” he said comically.  
  
“Um, Wolffe, it’s Eywa,” the Rodian appeared on the hologram.  
  
“Is everybody alright?” Wolffe wasn’t surprised. Among his social set, he was known to be a reliable bloke to break up a fight or handle a situation and avoid entanglements with authorities.  
  
“It’s Fanda, we came in this morning and she wasn’t moving,” Eywa’s hologram said gravely.  
  
The way Fanda lived, it could have been anything. Heart trouble. Drugs cut with a high percentage or some kind of chemical poison. Shit, she could have accidentally eaten the rat poison laced food that restaurants put out to get rid of stray animals.  
  
It made Wolffe angry how unfair that was. She was a good person, she didn’t deserve to die all alone. Wolffe realized, he probably could have done or said things to vent his frustration that might make him feel better. But fair or not, Fanda was already dead. There was not anything anybody could do to change it.  
  
“The paramedic droids just took her away to the morgue,” Eywa was breaking up.  
  
Wolffe focused on the moment, “Alright. I’ll send you a transmission in a bit. I know what to do.”  
  
Niki stirred a bit and looked around through low eyelids, “What the kark we do in here, sacrifice a baby?”

  


State Boys’ Home 

  


Wolffe was trying to look as if he was used to acting like an adult outside of work. For some reason his voice went up about an octave and he spoke more quietly in order to be non-threatening. He didn’t want any trouble, “Hello, I’m here to pick up Den for his mother’s funeral.”  
  
The staff person at the admitting window asked in a monotone, “Are you the father?”  
  
Wolffe felt bolstered. If he was passing as a father, well, that was about as adult as you could look. It proved you’d had sex and everything.  
  
He hoped there wasn’t some catch, “Uh, it won’t make me owe any child support or something if I say yes? You’re not going to make me pay you back for his room and board here? Because I’m currently unemployed…” he lied. This far from the base, most humans didn’t know what clones looked like out of armor.  
  
The staff person looked like they had heard that question before, “Uh….no. But only a parent or recognized guardian is allowed to take him. There is no listed father, so I could put you in as one.”  
  
Wolffe always saw an advantage to be had in amusing lies, “Then I guess I am.”  
  
The staff member was not paid enough to care personally, “Name?”  
  
Wolffe pulled out his fake id, “Ben, good old Ben…Drankin.”  
  
She just shrugged, “Let me see your identification.” He gave her the card and she copied the relevant information from it into their database.  
  
–  
  
Ziggurat Bottom, Coruscant, Twenty years later. 

  


The sky was smoggy overhead. Drizzly and gray, even in the night. To get to her grandmother’s place, Alis had to navigate public transportation at night to get from Uscru to ‘Rat Bottom.  
  
She was glad to be done with her shift. She needed the respite from singing the corporate birthday song to drunk guys who stuffed the tips down the pants of her stupid uniform.  
  
She had given Wolffe her address and told him to meet her there that night, but she was afraid she was going to be late, since her boss had taken extra time to count up her tips, then he confiscated some of the money, giving bullshit reasons. It took every bit of her strength to not use her years of Mandalorian upbringing to break his fingers. But the last thing she needed was a police record.  
  
Alis wasn’t hungry, she’d eaten off the plates at work, like most of the staff did. It wasn’t sanitary, but who could resist a steak with only two bites out of it? Or some actual vegetables, which the patrons rarely touched at all. There was always some fried things left in the baskets and they still smelled good. Alis needed the job, it was her only source of essential vitamins and minerals.  
  
Managers discouraged eating off of plates, because if they just let staff eat the food, even though it was bound for the trash, it would encourage them to make themselves whatever they wanted and claim it was by mistake and get free food. It sounded like corporate doctrine rather than something the managers had come up with their numb witted selves. But Alis didn’t bother to question their idiotic logic to defend something so inhumane as making people eat trash in secret. The service industry was dehumanizing, her uncle Gregor always said.  
  
Alis had to shop on her way home to bring her grandma things. She had her old Concord Dawn farm poncho to wear over her uniform. She wore her hood up, hoping to pass for one of the smaller species instead of a human female. She had combat training and carried her side arms, but the first rule of defense was to avoid trouble altogether.  
  
Alis’ parents had been the children of Eriadan rural farmers, evacuated by the Jedi at the end of a brief conflict on their homeworld. Refugees had been given free apartments in buildings that belonged to the charitable arm of the Order. Since then the Jedi charities had blown away with the winds of change. The buildings were now state property, but most people couldn’t afford to live anywhere else on the surface, so they kept their old rent contracts. To try to get people to vacate, the state didn’t do maintenance on the properties. So the places was more run down than ever. But the inhabitants stayed. Small though the dwellings were, affordable places to live were things to protect on Coruscant, especially for poor people.  
  
From the Metro stop, Alis made her way through the newly familiar places, like something out of a dream. She tread where her mother had been hundreds of times, through the crowded warren of hidden spaces created as taller buildings took up the sky above. Alis recovered memories of being in her arms. She sensed rather than saw the path for her feet to follow to her grandmother’s door.  
  
She pushed open the button on the panel and found Wolffe in her bed with her grandmother on top of him.  
  
“Alis? It’s not what it looks like!” Wolffe claimed, red faced.  
  
“Grandma!” Alis dropped her things.  
  
“Grandma?” Wolffe barked.  
  
Her grandma casually waved the blaster she’d been holding to his head and spoke in her native language, “He made me do it!”  
  
Alis understood Eriadan, but answered in Basic, because she knew her grandma understood it fine, “Last week it was the garbage man, before that, the food delivery guy, the meter reader,” Alis was livid, “Before that, the guy that came to drop off that package...”  
  
Wolffe snickered at that last one, “I just knocked on the door to ask where the right address was!” He headed off to the refresher, pleading his case. “I thought I might be in the wrong place...but she was so hospitable...I figured...while I was waiting...”  
  
“Grandma this is my friend..,” Alis facepalmed to cover her eyes.  
  
Alis’ grandma looked at the shopping basket and kept to her own language, “Oh, good, you got food, I know this guy likes to eat.”  
  
Alis blushed, even though Wolffe hadn’t understood.  
  
Wolffe washed off in the sink and put his clothes to right. Then he started compulsively scrubbing the bathroom sink with cleaning fluid and a sponge. Then he took out some glass cleaner and wiped off the mirror.  
  
Alis tried to stay sane.  
  
While her grandmother rifled the shopping basket, Alis grabbed the blaster, put the safety on. She discreetly brought it to Wolffe and he took it, covering with sleight of hand and promptly hid it in the plumbing panel behind the toilet.  
  
He had seen a bunch of dead scurriers out front and some singe marks on the ground outside, so Granny wasn’t afraid to use it.  
  
Alis whispered, “I’m sorry, Uncle, I should have warned you...” Her grandmother was more demented than Gregor had been. “I didn’t know she’d bought another weapon.”  
  
Wolffe had noticed just walking around that they sold blasters everywhere practically freely and people wore theirs pretty openly on the street. He still kept his under his clothes, because as a darker human, he didn’t want to provoke police droids. In his experience, their programming was chronically anti-melanin.  
  
Grandma was also obviously pretty drunk, which was usual for her by this time of day. Alcohol was still freely available as well and marketed in a wide variety of dispensing methods and a large price range.  
  
Grandma’s impulses had eroded to the point that she was dragging in every man who happened by her lair.  
  
Wolffe tried to lighten the mood, “I’m glad I insisted we use protection. What I understand from all that porn, food delivery guys bone everyone they come in contact with. I ain’t looking to get infected with the neighborhood scourge,” Wolffe wasn’t trying to be helpful.  
  
“SHE is the neighborhood scourge!” Alis pointed at her granny.  
  
Alis’ grandmother cooked dinner while Wolffe and Alis sat on either side of her living room table.  
  
“I have not seen my father,” Alis admitted.  
  
“The bastard! The only person worse than my asshole son was that slut wife of his,” Alis’ grandmother shouted from where she stood over the soup.  
  
Alis rolled her eyes and answered in Basic, “’That Slut’? You mean my mother?”  
  
“A slut, eh? Well, I don’t like fast women,” Wolffe snickered.  
  
Alis facepalmed again, this time to try not to laugh.  
  
“Look, sweetie, I’m not saying what you should do, but wouldn’t he be the most likely to have info on your mom?” Wolffe was merely pointing out something he thought was a possibility, not something he hoped was true. He didn’t need some deadbeat dad as competition.  
  
“I didn’t even ask for his address,” Alis knew it was sabotaging. She didn’t care.  
  
Wolffe couldn’t judge, considering his actions of late. They were a pair, the two of them, letting their emotions make their decisions. Or in his case with his most recent decision, even baser instincts.  
  
Wolffe decided he should try to stop being a nuisance, “Well...am I here to help or am I here to help? Maybe I could go find him. Get a look, ask some questions if possible. If there is anything you might want to know I can tell you. If it’s too awful, you’ve spared yourself some trauma and I can tell you or not tell you when you think you’re ready. I could be a kind of emotional bodyguard.”  
  
Granny raved a bit in her dialect.  
  
Wolffe asked Alis, “What did she say?”  
  
“She says her idiot son works as a ventilation mechanic. She can give you his information. If you tell him she died, he’ll rush right over here, he’s after the apartment,” Alis translated.  
  
Wolffe looked around the place dubiously, “Yeah...that seems true.”  
  
Grandmother brought over her soup and sat in a chair, grumbling explanation that her knees hurt if she got too low down.  
  
Alis translated, through stifled laughter. It was cozy.  
  
“So how do you know him?” grandmother looked at Alis, like she was interrogating. But she was tickling Wolffe's leg under the table with her toe.  
  
Wolffe made eye contact with Alis. She made a face that said that yes, she was aware and yes, her granny was off her rocker. And sorry about the sex assault at gunpoint.  
  
“Wolffe saved my life. I told you about that, grandma. A few times. Remember? I nearly died from dehydration,” Alis explained in Basic, knowing granny understood it.  
  
“You can die from that, now? When I was a girl, we had to worry about there being too much rain,” granny Marija grumbled.  
  
“What did she say,” Wolffe asked.  
  
Alis summarized, “Grandma likes to judge everything in the present as being worse than in a previous time, when she was young and everything was wonderful and people were more decent. But she also thinks nobody had ever had it worse than her generation and that young people are weak.  
  
Wolffe absolutely loved that game, “Oh yeah, kids today, you know?”  
  
Wolffe pretended to listen intently while the grandmother complained a blue streak while slugging her cheap grain alcohol. She had passed out in her chair. Alis and Wolffe went out to the stoop to look like they were just hanging out. Probe droids wouldn’t care much what they talked about if they looked boring.  
  
They passed his nysillin vaporizer between them. Wolffe messed around a bit with the guitar. He sang her his version of Yub Nub. It made them both laugh.  
  
“How did you get past the customs?” Alis asked.  
  
“A miracle. But I’m here now. Until I keel over from a heart attack or whatever,” Wolffe was failing miserably at his goal of trying to sound positive. “I don’t know how many tomorrows I got….”  
  
“Fewer if you mess with my grandma,” Alis wasn’t really joking.  
  
“Boy, don’t I know it, the woman is insatiable,” Wolffe popped his jaw. He figured she knew who she was dealing with.  
  
Alis put her face in her hands. Because she did know. “When I found her with the delivery man…I can’t even say what they were doing…”  
  
“Does it involve a hat of some kind?” Wolffe asked, as an in joke between them.  
  
Alis shrieked with laughter.  
  
It had been a while since Wolffe had heard a woman laugh. It made him happy. It only encouraged him to get everything out of his system, “Now, now, what you interrupted was just two consenting adults expressing their feelings…...of desperation.” He started talking like old Cut when he tried to give his son ‘The Talk’, “When two people love each other very much, they sometimes want to show that love in a special way. And sometimes two total strangers might decide spur of the moment to get down, because who they hurting, really?”  
  
Alis wrinkled her nose.  
  
Wolffe got annoyed, “Don’t be judgmental. What? It’s just fine knowing that my brother Rex slammed your mom, but your grandma and I, that isn’t okay? I’m not dead! I thought it would be reassuring to you to know that I consented. I didn’t know she was your grandma until you showed up, ruiner.”  
  
“Oh Force help me. Wolffe, what am I gonna do?” Alis finally let it all out. She cried and laughed at once. She had felt overwhelmed since the first night she was there. “I can’t stay home all day, I have to work.”  
  
“I’ll help out with her,” Wolffe chuckled.  
  
Alis looked dubious.  
  
Wolffe was hoping she would have laughed again. It was a funny situation, he thought. “I mean, I can do stuff for you so you can have more time with her. I’ll try to get a side hustle going so we’ll have some money.”  
  
“You’d do all that for me?” Alis asked.  
  
“It’s what family does for each other,” Wolffe hazarded calling it that.  
  
“Okay, ‘Grandpa’. Maybe I can help you too, maybe I can find out what happened to your ex,” Alis was trying to be helpful.  
  
Wolffe was trying to help Alis find her dream of reuniting with her mom, the least she could do was help him find his dream too.  
  
But Wolffe felt stabbed in the chest. It was the phrasing. Alis couldn’t have known the significance.  
  
Wolffe had never referred to his relationship with Niki in the past sense, though he hadn’t seen her in two thirds of the entire time he’d been alive. He had never felt the need to change the terminology. There was only one person he could have been referring to when he said ‘his girl’. Since she was the one and only person who’d ever allowed him to call her his anything. Never mind she was his only ever real girlfriend in all his pathetic life. Specifying who was meant by it would have been unnecessary and redundant, so everyone around him had just let him maintain it like a harmless fiction. He had never referred to her in the state of ‘ex’. He couldn’t. She was all he’d ever had.  
  
It allowed Wolffe to always carry the sense that as long as they were both alive, he and Niki were not over. And anyway, whatever it was they’d committed to between them was flexible enough to allow time apart. Though he was sure that was probably just what he had told himself, as he’d spent the last two decades pondering its mystery. But he figured, as long as he was able to remember the feeling, there would be hope.  
  
Contrarywise, Wolffe was sure his heart was too heavy to bear. Look at Rex, he’d left the minute he had the option, the way Wolffe always knew he would. Look at Gregor. Gregor had spent a good portion of his and Wolffe’s life alone together trying to end himself to get away from him.  
  
Wolffe still wanted to cling to the self-delusion that somebody he’d loved didn’t find it unbearable to be around him.  
  
Wolffe decided he should at least try to set a good example, though. He told Alis something he’d never said out loud. “Okay, look…I’ve worked it out, logically, all I gotta do is figure out what I want.”  
  
Alis looked incredulous, “Yeeeessss….”  
  
“So, my state of knowing at the present time is that she could be dead or alive, happy or miserable, nothing precludes me from believably assuming that things are the way I wish them to be,” Wolffe was crafting a logical argument, so as to think rather than feel his feelings.  
  
“But it also could burden you with fear for the absolute worst,” Alis countered.  
  
“Now, if I do nothing, I would be free to absolve myself, taking it out of my hands. ‘If it’s meant to be… Someday...’”  
  
“Uh huh,” Alis actually seemed to be following, “Just dreaming.”  
  
“That’s a state most people can live with. Allowing themselves some room for hope, but not taking any responsibility for action,” Wolffe was speaking clone, with requisite facial expressions. “Except ignorance and hope are no refuge. My body of knowledge could change, that is always a possibility, and one that is uncontrollable.”  
  
“Like if you found out somehow that she’s really dead,” Alis cut right to the point.  
  
Wolffe felt the stab of pain again. He thought he was probably overdue for a heart attack at his age. General Plo had told him that it was known to happen that a person could will their own hearts to stop beating when overcome by grief. The living Force within them extinguished like a dead whale falling to suffocate at the bottom of the sea.  
  
“For instance…,” Wolffe waved a hand to remove the stink of the thought. “New knowledge limits what could be hoped for. So am I happier not knowing? Am I better off?”  
  
“Even if you are better off, I think the fact that you’re thinking about this means that you want to know. What if she is out there? Are you willing to risk your present so-so delusion for a chance at something better?” Alis seemed to be enjoying the conversation despite the crazy. She didn’t have many interesting people to talk to.  
  
“What is hope, but every gambler’s ruin. The truth is, according to laws of statistics, even in something with the odds being fifty/fifty, like a coin flip where you have only two people betting heads or tails. Over all, things should and would balance out. The problem is, the cash will eventually run to zero for both of them and then they can’t bet anymore, so the balancing out never has a chance to happen. Being left with nothing always happens, just depends on how fast. Sometimes you get lucky and walk out of there before it drops to zero, and sometimes people think they have nothing else to lose and decide to put themselves into debt for a line of credit. You can have less than nothing. I know people already had no hope. Only to have things get worse. When you’re out of bets and can’t pay back your debts, you get kicked out of the casino or worse, now live in fear of people you owe.”  
  
“We’re not talking about money. It’s love. They’re not the same nature, laser brain,” Alis looked at the vaporizer. This government grade Imperial nysillin was much more potent than the low grade pipe weed they had back on the farm on Concord Dawn.  
  
“But I’m just barely keeping it together now. What are my real possibilities? I either see her again, or I get rejected or I find out something horrible…and I feel worse,” Wolffe was hoping Alis would see by now what he was trying to teach her. “I’m afraid.”  
  
“We can be afraid together. Then, even if we find out something bad or get rejected, we’ll still have each other,” Alis reasoned. “Then we’ll have less to be afraid of. Going back to zero won’t be possible then.”  
  
“Deal,” Wolffe breathed a sigh of relief.  
  
–

Grand Republic Medical Facility, Coruscant, Twenty One Years Before

  


“So you were one of her friends?” Den ‘Drankin’ asked his ‘father’ when they were waiting at the hospital for the ashes to be brought up from the crematorium. The way he’d said the word, ‘friends’ was dismissive.  
  
Den hadn’t seen his mom in over a year leading up to her death. The lab tests had said an overdose. He assumed that’s how Wolffe knew her was because of drugs. That’s how she knew practically everyone she knew his whole life. When he was growing up, she’d always prioritized the adults she knew over him. ‘Friend’ meant people she did drugs with. People who might have drugs or know someone who did. People who might be able to loan her money for drugs or spot her the drugs that she could pay for later when she got some money.  
  
Those people hadn’t loved her. Those people hadn’t needed her. She let them use her and she chose them.  
  
Meanwhile, Den loved her. He needed her. His mom was all he’d ever had.  
  
It used to hurt, but so many years of that being his reality, Den had become numb to it. Except such passive aggressions as sarcastically using the word ‘friends’ at a total stranger.  
  
“I was happy to have her. Not many people want a friend like me,” Wolffe answered, suddenly conscious of what a mess he looked like.  
  
Den was technically a year older than Wolffe in years and more in experience. But as Wolffe was the one who could buy alcohol legally, he sort of fell into the adult role.  
  
He dressed to look a mess so people wouldn’t look at him, they’d look away. Then they wouldn’t notice he was a clone and throw him out of where he wasn’t supposed to be. But as he looked like a person who was chronically up to no good, he was suddenly worried the ‘kid’ would think his mother didn’t deserve good people for her friends.  
  
In fact, Wolffe was a child, despite having been charged with a battalion of human lives and a bunch of deadly weapons. He knew the kid didn’t need his stupid advice.  
  
Den said something he thought sounded grown up, though when it came out it sounded childish, “I wish I could have stayed with her. I could have given her help getting clean.”  
  
“And how could you do that?” Wolffe was genuinely curious. None of his brothers had ever conquered addiction with anything but a battlefield death. If you were merely injured, they’d fill you full of new addictive substances and send you back to work.  
  
“If I was here, I’m older now, I could have convinced her not to. Without me here, she had nothing stopping her,” Den mourned.  
  
“The drugs already owned her probably before you were born,” Wolffe didn’t know if he was helping.  
  
“She had a choice,” Den hadn’t. He was born to a drug addict who didn’t have the strength to protect herself, never mind him.  
  
“Sometimes you don’t, kid,” Wolffe was manufactured to be a soldier. No choice about it. Yet some people would still hold that against him. Call him killer, as if that’s who he was. “What could we know about what she thought her choice actually was? Maybe your mom didn’t know any better. Maybe she did, or she chose it because at a different time in her life, it had fewer consequences. Maybe she was using to escape, or deal with hardship. Or somebody told her they loved her and she did it for them. For all she had to say about being born poor, being abused before she was school age. What other options were offered her? All I know is...she loved you. She wished something better for you.”  
  
Wolffe was the first person Den had ever met who bothered to defend his mother.  
  
That made Den crack. He should have been the one defending her. “For all the good wishes do,” Den wiped his eyes.  
  
Wolffe put his arm around the kid’s shoulders, but tried to make it wooden enough to not be creepy, “I know, right?”  
  
–  
Twenty one years later- 

  


Wolffe was on the construction site, wearing his yellow vest, holding up the temporary traffic sign whenever speeders would fly by. One side of the paddle read “Slow,” the other read, “Stop.” Most people did neither, so he was needing to jump out of the way a lot. One of his co-workers drove by on the digging machine.  
  
“So when do I get to drive that?” Wolffe asked.  
  
The guy laughed.  
  
The requirement to keep getting his unemployment money was that he would work at least twenty hours a week for the government. If you did the math, as Wolffe had, it amounted to like five credits an hour and no reimbursement for transport to wherever they sent him. Wolffe met a work crew in the neighborhood who said they could use some help. It was only nine credits an hour, but it was walkable from where he was staying. So he was off the dole and on to part time hourly with no benefits or guarantee of hours day to day. He was doing his best to keep his head down until he could find something else, but he needed flexibility at the moment.  
  
Wolffe grumbled to himself, “The army trusted me with six million credit tanks, but you won’t let me drive that stupid thing.”  
  
Wolffe waved by traffic holding up the sign that said, “slow” and realized that it worked as a label. Like a public shaming.  
  
An officer of the law arrived. The owner of the construction company went over to greet him.  
  
The Stormtrooper acted as everyone expected he would. He shoved the owner out of the way so hard he fell to the ground, “This isn’t about you! Move along!”  
  
The owner knew his work site was displaying many obvious safety violations, so he was happy to let the trooper go about his business if he wasn’t there for an inspection.  
  
Wolffe recognized his man.  
  
“You, old man! Come with me!” the trooper grabbed Wolffe by the arm and took a set of binders off his belt.  
  
Wolffe couldn’t resist, “That girl told me she was eighteen! Besides, she said her father’s only mad because I got to her first, the perv!”  
  
All of Wolffe’s co-workers looked over.  
  
“This is about that turnstyle you jumped on the metro,” the Stormtrooper specified.  
  
“Oh,” Wolffe reacted, “Never mind then!”  
  
He would be on time for work the next day and never explain himself. He might even get sympathy. His co-workers had already been having a very loud conversation about a girl they all agreed was a piece of ass. It was the foreman’s fifteen year old daughter. The company owner had initiated the conversation. Her father had eventually bowed to social pressure and admitted she was attractive. He joked he was going to have to lock her in a tower to ‘keep the boys away’.  
  
The Stormtrooper put Wolffe in binders, shaking his helmet.  
  
Then, suddenly, Wolffe took off running and the trooper chased.  
  
Wolffe ran into the Armory Park as fast as he could manage, making sure to make a show of zig zagging as he ran and yelled loudly. The kids in the tent city laughed and cheered as they saw him come through, as he did most days. From what they saw, that old geezer was always in trouble with the authorities. The story around was that he deliberately provoked them for fun. The vagrants loved it. If troops were busy chasing him, they weren’t coming to bother anybody else. The pursuit was comical. A welcome distraction.  
  
The Stormtrooper in pursuit blasted away and hit the ground several times, never hitting a patch of ground anywhere near where Wolffe was. Wolffe yelped nonetheless to make it look frightening.  
  
The trooper reached up and adjusted his ill fitting helmet on the run, blaster in hand, safety recklessly off.  
  
While running, Wolffe took his lock pick out of his belt with his hands, put it in his teeth and picked the lock. He ran under a bridge where he knew there were no surveillance cameras. Because he’d taken good care of them. He then came to an abrupt stop and pulled out a thin collapsible rain poncho of the type that could be purchased at any newsstand. He put it on and sat on the curb. A few speeders whizzed by, through the tunnel formed by the bridge. A perpendicular line of speeders whizzed by overhead.  
  
The Stormtrooper had stopped running as soon as he was under the bridge. The troop looked around with his helmet scanner for spy probe droids. Then he removed his helmet and breathed deep. Then he coughed from the vehicle exhaust.  
  
Wolffe tossed him a blanket he had stashed there earlier.  
  
Den wrapped it around himself to cover the armor. He stooped his posture to look like no more than a destitute park resident. Under the blanket, he began removing the armor components and handing them to Wolffe.  
  
Wolffe put them on over his black clothes under the poncho. He had some errands to run and he needed authority. State thuggery was accepted for access to most official entrance points. Or he could just jump into some naval officer or politician’s retinue and follow wherever they were going.  
  
Wolffe and Den the Stormtrooper were speaking in voices that were mostly drowned out by the vehicles. Once the armor was transferred, Wolffe filled his vaporizer with nysillin and they passed it back and forth as they spoke. Therefore, they didn’t look suspicious. Human men who hung out under bridges to do drugs were typical, even the occasional Stormtrooper or Imperial officer who needed a fix wasn’t out of place there. Light drug users were the kinds of people the Empire ignored, mostly. They were easy to control, they didn’t make much trouble if they were contained.  
  
“Well, I read your enlistment documents trying to find a loophole,” Wolffe began. He had had an education that included a decent working vocabulary. Most people of Den’s generation didn’t. Wartime schools had been horrible. Imperial schools were worse. Most kids didn’t understand the standard legal language of contracts, then they were required to sign themselves up for debt or service to get an education or stable employment.  
  
“And?” Den sounded hopeful.  
  
“So how do you feel about staging your death?” Wolffe asked in a tone that wasn’t serious, but he actually was. The recruitment documents for the army were pretty iron clad. Not as bad as the slavery recruitment route Wolffe had been subjected to. But he felt that somehow made it more sinister. It was still slavery and the powers of government were demanding that it have the pretense of personal choice for some reason. One at least gave you the option to hate the oppressors, but the other just made you hate yourself.  
  
“Look, with the custodial agreement, they have to make ‘reasonable allowance’ for me to be here to care for you, ‘my decrepit father’. I asked if that meant I’ll be stationed here on Coruscant until your death, which is how that rule is commonly understood. But all my commanding officer would commit to was ‘until it is no longer possible’, which of course is completely up to her what that means. My C.O. hates me. I’m gonna end up getting sent to Lahsbane for sure.”  
  
“Well, what’s their policy about hitting on your commanding officer? Do they still offer things like transfer to a different C.O.?” That was how the situation was dealt with in the Republic Navy back in the day.  
  
“We only interact in armor. How would that even work?” Den asked. The Stormtrooper lifestyle didn’t leave too many options for interpersonals. While his ‘dad’ was borrowing his armor, Den planned to go and do things like a normal person. Like go to a prostitute or eat barbecue.  
  
“How much do you weigh?” Wolffe sucked on the vaporizer thoughtfully.  
  
“Uh...why?” Den handed Wolffe the helmet.  
  
“Well, if you could save up enough of your own hair and nail clippings, we might be able to fool the testing droids into thinking you were in your armor, and we cook it beyond recognition. To declare a burned person dead, the droids are built to scan for genetic signature and rough weight of the ashes,” he didn’t want to explain why he knew all this. Army paperwork was not for the faint hearted. “That’s 3.5% of original weight. If we can collect enough hair and other discardeds, then we can make a dummy that weighs the same as you and it burns down, they will officially count you as dead,” Wolffe knew he sounded crazy. But brilliance was just crazy that worked, Skywalker had always said.  
  
“Oh, great. And then what?” Den didn’t have another plan. He’d been in the damn Stormtrooper corps for the last sixteen years, trying to think of some way to get out. He had nothing else.  
  
“Well, after that you’ll have to lay low. Since you’re dead,” Wolffe did his best to look cavalier.  
  
“Okay….?”  
  
“But don’t worry, I got some ideas and I know how to find phony credentials. We’ll have you returning as Lieutenant Leopold in no time,” Wolffe stroked his chops like Kenobi. “Do you mind wearing a fake beard?”  
  
“I guess I could spare a pint of blood here and there,” Den smirked.  
  
“Yes, but make sure to freeze it,” Wolffe was absolutely straight faced. “I’ll rent a freezer container with a lock, we can keep it at my girl’s place.”  
  
Den considered, “Shave off some thick foot skin and whatnot.”  
  
“Now you’re thinking,” Wolffe nodded. “Don’t forget personal emissions and the like.”  
  
“Won’t people think I’m crazy?” Den wondered, “Collecting the stuff?”  
  
“Who the kark would notice?” Wolffe had seen his brothers do all kinds of things to deal with confinement. Keeping jars of things he cared not to ask about was fairly run of the mill.  
  
“It’s just so disgusting, the thought of living with old parts of myself,” Den shook his head. Not in refusal, but in resignation.  
  
“You think that’s disgusting? Have you ever seen what Lahsbani gangrene does to a dick?” Wolffe handed Den a box of prophylactics, patted him on the shoulder. “Be safe.”  
  
Then Wolffe left Den to go about his day.  
  
Den waved thanks, “I know.”


	3. Carried Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rex's mission for Princess Leia is compromised by a case of feelings

Ziggurat Bottom, Coruscant, second year of the war

  


The apartment was tiny. Just one room with areas designated by what was placed in them. A little refresher partitioned in one corner. Counter and appliances in one corner for a kitchen. A table and chairs beside it for dining. Couch and holo-viewer in another corner for a living room. And a bed.  
  
Lina closed the door panel and they drew to each other, hands stroking, their mouths locked.  
  
She went for his belt.  
  
Rex gently grabbed her hands, “Let me.”  
  
His armor was complicated. If he let her try to figure it out, they’d never get to anything else. His mid section was already tingling in anticipation.  
  
He had had years of armor drills. It was off before she had done more than taken off her boots and undid her braids.  
  
She led him to her bed and gently bid him sit on the edge. Like a brief ceremony, they disrobed themselves. He took off his undersuit’s shirt. She removed her dress. He pulled off his pants.  
  
He blushed again when he realized she could see him. He’d never had a woman see him this way.  
  
Then he panicked when he realized he didn’t really know what would come next. His imagination had only ever got this far.  
  
She embraced him, his head at the level of her breasts. He explored her skin with his tongue. He started trembling.  
  
“You’re acting like you’ve never done this before,” she whispered.  
  
“I haven’t,” he surrendered. Rex had allowed himself to picture them together once, but grew so embarrassed at himself that he had stopped thinking about it. It didn’t feel right to think about her without her say so. Only his dreams had not obeyed his will after that.  
  
“Your first time...”  
  
“First everything.”  
  
It was exactly like his dreams somehow.

  


A few months later.

  


“Do you really have to go?” she asked, crying.  
  
Rex didn’t know why she cried so much. For all it helped.  
  
They had just finished making love for what would be the last they had time for this visit.  
  
He continued dressing. He felt cold about it, but he honestly didn’t have a choice. “Of course I do,” Rex tried to put a brave face on it, but most of the team going to Lola Sayu was sure they’d all be killed.  
  
“Why does it have to be you?” Lina phrased feelings as if they were facts worthy of contention.  
  
It was him because that was what he was made for. In Rex’s experience, she might as well have been asking why the sky was placed above them for all he could change about it.  
  
“I have a job to do. I can’t leave my duty to the Republic. I have to help protect my brothers. The Jedi are depending on me,” Rex had given her enough reasons, he decided. They were good reasons.  
  
“How can you show loyalty now? I don’t have any loyalty to a Republic that won’t let me have you,” Lina was being dramatic, Rex thought. He didn’t think she really meant it. What did loyalty to a place even mean when you had no choice about where to go?  
  
“We just need more time. It’s not the right time, but after we win the war, it will happen,” Rex still had faith.  
  
In Lina’s experience, there wasn’t much reason to. “But when? How long do we have to live like this? Keeping it a secret?”  
  
“Please, Lina,” Rex sighed, “I don’t have anything to give you.”  
  
“I didn’t ask for anything!” she spat back.  
  
“Well, no matter how much I want, I don’t even have myself. The only thing you can have is my love,” he looked at her, sitting on the edge of the bed, her naked skin looking so soft and vulnerable. “I know that’s not something that has substance. But it’s everything I own. Is that enough for you?”  
  
She kissed him and said it was enough. But love didn’t save them.

  


Last year of the war---

  


They were in the back room of her restaurant. Rex had come to see her that morning before he shipped off world again. He’d just wanted to explain to her about the horrible things he had proof the Republic was doing. It didn’t deserve his loyalty, his heart, or his belief. Not like she had.  
  
She was right. He had to tell her she was right.  
  
They had probably gotten a carried away in the moment, but neither of them questioned that it was what they wanted. They’d done it there on an old cot next to the pantry.  
  
Rex was putting his armor back on, she helped with the belt and gloves.  
  
Lina went over to the tin mirror above the sink and redid her braids to pin them up under her veil.  
  
Rex came to her and embraced her from behind. “You’re beautiful.”  
  
He looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her face looked troubled. Rex didn’t think it was about her husband.  
  
Then she turned around to see him face to face. “Will I ever see you again?” she asked, tears welling in her clear eyes.  
  
“No,” he answered what he thought was the truth. Though every bit of his heart wished otherwise.  
  
–  
  
Kothlis, Twenty years later

  


Rex’s three brothers escorted Rex and Kallus to a room to rest in.  
  
The instant they left, Rex tried the door, “Locked from the outside of course.”  
  
“Of course,” former ISB agent Kallus expected the worst of people.  
  
The room was spare, just a few chairs and a table. A tiny refresher. And a bed.  
  
They sat down side by side on the edge of the bed, so Rex put his arm around Kallus’ shoulders as if he was comforting him because he was scared. That way, they could speak quietly and hinder any listening devices. They both knew they were probably being monitored and at the mercy of their captors.  
  
Rex wasn’t mad about it. His brothers were just being cautious, it’s how he’d want them to be. But, as it was a Rebellion mission, he still needed to try to out smart them until he was sure he could trust them to reveal his true loyalties. It was a delicate business.  
  
“So what are they waiting for?” Kallus whispered, nuzzling Rex’s neck. He had to depend on Rex to explain what to expect. Outsiders didn’t really understand clones.  
  
Rex hoped Zeb figured out something happened by then and knew not to be too worried.  
  
The stakes were high. If Rex was right and these brothers worked for the ‘Queen of Abrion’, he was right on target. But he had to stay undercover because the queendom was branded as a mysterious and barbaric regime. This queen was an unknown quantity, she could sell them out to the Empire if that was her inclination.  
  
And if the clones found out who Kallus was, they might not feel too friendly. ISB were not popular.  
  
The charade that they were a couple was the only thing keeping them safe.  
  
Rex said what he hoped, “It might be nothing more than harmless hazing.”  
  
“You don’t know these men personally. Are you sure?” Kallus asked. He automatically assumed they’d be tortured and interrogated whether Rex’s clone brothers intended to let them through their gates or not. It’s what the Empire would do. Alexsandr was tired of being tortured.  
  
“No, it’s good. I think these guys might really be who we’re looking for,” Rex whispered loud enough to be heard. Rex couldn’t get into a long explanation of what his secret mission was until he was sure they weren’t monitored. Rex took Alexsandr’s face gently in his hands, they made eye contact to communicate by facial expression. “We made it!”  
  
Kallus registered understanding. He rolled with it, “At last, we can be together!” He hugged Rex closely.  
  
Rex had no choice but to hug back, “What’d I tell you? My family takes care of each other. Stick with me, baby, we’ll be fine.” Then, almost as a reflex in response to the close contact, Rex kissed Alexsandr on the forehead. He surprised himself.  
  
Rex suddenly got nervous wondering how much he and Kallus might have to commit. He didn’t want to do anything to upset Zeb. Kallus’ very large Lasat boyfriend happened to be a good friend of his.  
  
He and Alexsandr had already kissed like lovers for show.  
  
They could explain themselves, but Rex assumed Zeb wouldn’t want anyone kissing his partner.  
  
Not that Rex had ever really had much actual experience having a partner. But it’s what he thought about himself. It’s how he’d felt the one time he’d been in love. Picturing Lina being kissed by someone else still hurt him to that day. Although rationally he knew that was what had happened, Alis wasn’t immaculately conceived. Yet, Rex couldn’t tell his body not to viscerally recoil at the thought.  
  
He guessed it was just what jealousy was. And he had never been given the chance to get over it. He had never given himself the chance. Because honestly, the hurt feeling was one of the only things he had left of her.  
  
He was ashamed to admit how long ago it was. Since he’d even been held by another person this way. Being embraced, even by Alexsandr, was kind of nice.  
  
–  
  
The room upstairs in the cantina had been labeled a crime scene by local authorities. A dead bartender had been taken out and two droids thrown on the scrap heap.  
  
The bounty hunter, Laneet Purs, had recovered the droids’ heads before the police had arrived. Back in her room, she pried them open to find their transaction records. She found the fake id’s Kallus and Rex used and accessed the records of a ship docking.  
  
Then she went to the bay and waited. When some men came to retrieve it, she’d followed them back to their hangar.  
  
\--  
  
Rex’s brothers returned to report that they had retrieved their ship for them. They’d brought the personal effects. So Rex gratefully had his prescription with him. This was no time to go off his meds. A psychotic episode was the last thing he needed in all this surreality.  
  
His brother, the one he called 'Doc', gave him another dose of the healing serum.  
  
The other clones, brought in a meal on white trays. It made Rex smile seeing the customary clone academy tableware still in use. The younger clones brought in extra chairs and sat down to share the meal.  
  
“So Surf, what was your outfit?” 'Dopey' asked Rex.  
  
Rex did everything he could not to cringe at the alias. He’d come up with it spur of the moment, which was probably for the best. If he tried to pick himself a name beforehand, he would run the risk of over thinking it, and he’d select something that would be obvious enough to give himself away.  
  
He regretted that he couldn’t be himself among his brothers. But he was too well known to be able to use his own name.  
  
Aside from the notorious Boba Fett, Rex was the most famous Fett clone that ever lived, modest though the distinction at that level of the universe.  
  
His presence among them would surely have merited way more scrutiny than he wanted on this undercover mission for an organization in open defiance of the galactic government. Rex was in the awkward position of trying to lie to people who shared a body with him. Clones were sticklers for details. There might be guys they could call in who would know if he gave them wrong facts.  
  
“I started off a navigation officer on the Endurance II,” Rex was unwavering, “End of the war I was supposed to be on the troop transport taking the 501st to Mandalore, but I was in the infirmary with alcohol poisoning, so I missed reveille. My C.O. was gonna kill me, I was sure, but then the whole ship vanished on the return trip. So I just got reassigned in the new Imperial navy. That’s where I met Charlie.”  
  
He was blushing from shame, telling lies to his brothers. Recalling how he had lectured more than one person in his lifetime about how it was very wrong to lie. Rex switched mode to sentimental, since that was an outlet for how awkward he felt lying. He could play like he was blushing from love.  
  
“It seems like it was destiny,” Alexsandr reached out and touched Rex’s hand.  
  
Rex was feeling tingles of excitement at just being able to sit and hold hands with someone openly.  
  
“Look,” Rex tried to stick to facts so he didn’t have to lie as much, “We are grateful you saved our lives. We don’t want to work for the Empire anymore. We’ll tell you anything you want to know, but please, tell us what’s going on.”  
  
Rex was unaware that security protocols on Rishi colony had been amped up in the wake of a bombing by one of the last guys who had been admitted. The last 501st guy.  
  
Fiver, a low level private who had been transferred in shortly before Mandalore and had lived through the Battle of the Jedi Temple. He might have recognized Rex if he’d been there. But as it was, Fiver had murdered two of his own brothers and tried to kill the queen. Then he was recorded raving like a madman about a coming reckoning where Darth Vader would kill the Emperor and gain the power to resurrect the dead, and more. So the clones had decided to identify it as a mental health issue.  
  
Even though he was their brother, so technically had unalienable rights, they had to keep ‘Surf’ controlled until they could suss him out. Emergency laws meant not to be cavalier about true information. ‘Surf’ seemed wholly rational and in control of his faculties. So his brothers were giving him the benefit of the doubt. He was being subjected to standard procedure by the letter.  
  
Rex was unaware of the reason for their scrutiny, but he assumed it rational. Even though he was lying through his teeth. They hadn’t asked to scan Rex’s wrist tag. That made him relieved. There was no faking that.  
  
'Doc' started questioning, “Are there more of you where you came from?”  
  
“I’m the only one of us whose whereabouts I know,” Rex phrased it truthfully. “So are there more of you?”  
  
The young clones had been the last Fett clones manufactured. The three brothers were all surplus clones from their factory. Too young to fight in the war and obsolete equipment by the time they’d be ready. Old timers like Rex obviously were their heroes. The one he called 'Grumpy' was seemingly candid, trusting his brother who he had only just met. Clones of his generation had trouble imagining being loyal to anyone but family. He was inclined to give kin the benefit of the doubt.  
  
So 'Grumpy' was eager to brag. “We’re an off-world cell, long term embedded in Bothan Space like a miniature colony. Most of us came here doing off-world experience. We’re part of the community. Blending in. Nobody asks questions.”  
  
“Hiding in plain sight?” Rex understood.  
  
“It’s a big galaxy. The Bothans don’t have any reason to know we’re the remnants of a top secret military project who committed a genocide or anything,” the third, 'Dopey', winked.  
  
All clones of their age had extensive tattooing, which tended to distract the natural born from recognizing what variety of human they were. Most people had never seen a clone to know what they were looking at even in their heyday. The war was nearly two decades over. Sometimes it seemed there were hardly any people left old enough to remember their people had ever existed. Almost like a fairy folk.  
  
“You got to be more careful traveling, brother,” 'Doc' warned. “The last few weeks there have been agents out offering decent dataris for a live Fett boy.”  
  
Kallus raised an eyebrow, “They recognized him immediately, but they didn’t come after you three?”  
  
“This is our home, we watch who’s coming and going,” 'Dopey' bragged.  
  
“Who is doing this?” Rex was genuinely surprised. He hadn’t anticipated more danger. He was used to being ignored those days.  
  
“Well, usually we’re the only ones in the market for us. We resent the competition,” 'Grumpy' used a napkin to clean his hands.  
  
“No really,” Rex insisted.  
  
“Probably about the serum again,” 'Dopey' used a knife to cut apart his food. Showing it conspicuously. He was putting portions on Kallus’ plate for him, like he would for a child or a younger sibling. “It doesn’t work on anybody who’s not us, but that doesn’t stop people from trying to decode it.”  
  
“Anyway, now that we have you here, you’re safe,” 'Grumpy' looked at Kallus and patted his back.  
  
Rex wondered if he should act jealous, or at least set his brothers straight about who was supposed to be touching Alexsandr. It occurred to him that he could probably openly discuss that if they were being monitored. It sounded like real couple stuff. So he planned to bring it up when they were alone again. He needed things to talk about to pass the time.  
  
Rex realized that the bounty was how they were going to rationalize detaining him indefinitely. For his safety. That upset him more than he wanted it to. He needed to take a dose of his prescription to quiet impulses from anger.  
  
“Are there many external threats? What kind of enemies do we have?” Rex used ‘we’.  
  
“No more than anybody in the Outer Rim. Just trying to make our way in the universe,” 'Doc' shrugged.  
  
Rex tried to remember where he’d heard that, “Whom do you work for?”  
  
“Queen Concordia. She’s the matriarch, but we technically all work for the uh...family organization,” 'Dopey' specified.  
  
“Concordia Spice Company?” Kallus asked suddenly.  
  
“Oh you know about it?” 'Doc' asked Kallus.  
  
“It was the sponsor for my favorite Eriadan historical fantasy holo-novela,” Kallus admitted.  
  
Rex thought he remembered something about that silly pre-teen soap opera that had a character named ‘Captain Rex’ who wore armor similar to his. He hadn’t been in the mood to pay attention to it at the time. Now it made sense.  
  
“Yes, don’t you remember, Surf,” Kallus made eye contact with Rex. He began to sing the sponsor’s jingle that ran over the end credits of the soap. In Basic, since he had only the captioning to go by. The translation had been...poor. “Concordia Spice! For people who have lots of friends!” Kallus sang.  
  
“Wait, your organization sponsored that holo-novela?” Rex wished he was surprised.  
  
“We made it. Or, the state production company did. It was just made to sell the spice and other export products,” 'Grumpy' admitted.  
  
“Drugs sponsoring kids’ programs?” Rex was confused.  
  
“That’s not illegal on Eriadu. We were trying to do it so blatantly that it would force them to legislate against it,” 'Dopey' laughed.  
  
“Extreme,” Rex was worried.  
  
“It sort of worked,” 'Doc' explained. “The program got banned, so it raised awareness. Then more people pirated it, wondering what it was about. Our ads distributed for free.”  
  
“You do allow for debate on tactics interfering on other worlds...don’t you?” Kallus asked, surprising them.  
  
“We do. We ain’t the Empire for Knozzle’s sake,” 'Dopey' laughed, lighting a nysillin pipe to finish his meal. He offered around.  
  
It helped to build trust to partake of convivial substances. Rex tentatively accepted, but only after asking Kallus’ permission. His ‘boyfriend’ assented, so Rex thanked him and put his arm around him. That seemed to make his brothers back off.  
  
Rex was wiped out after two hits and went to sleep without incident. He slept in all his clothes, but Alexsandr tucked him under the covers.  
  
\--  
  
They passed the time the next day, mostly playing cards with a deck Alexsandr had in his pack. Before they knew it, it was night time.  
  
Neither was unfamiliar with sleeping rough, or sleeping beside their colleagues for that matter. Military life involved a lot of less than ideal conditions.  
  
But there was awkwardness to them bedding down behind closed doors. Even if it was just pretend. The loosening and removal of clothes for comfort seemed so strange to be doing together, acting so familiar, but there was just no way of avoiding each other or even averting their eyes completely. It was the first time they’d even had even so much as bare feet in front of each other.  
  
Rex found his face was flushed with embarrassment as he removed his belt. He was unsure how far he should go. He decided to stay mostly dressed. Kallus went as far as a shirt and underpants. Rex figured that fit their personas.  
  
They lay side by side looking at the ceiling for a bit. Rex didn’t know how to position. With his brothers, protocol was if you had to sleep too close, it should be back to back. But he wasn’t sure if turning his back on Kallus seemed like an invitation. He was immediately embarrassed for thinking something so silly. Nobody was looking to jump Rex’s Fett ass.  
  
Alexsandr finally put his arm around Rex and closed his eyes as he intended to go to sleep. He joked sarcastically, “It’s only awkward if you make it awkward.”  
  
It was exactly something Wolffe would have done. Wolffe never respected physical boundaries with his brothers. They had all come to expect it out of him, so it wasn’t a big deal. Brothers actually enjoyed getting one of his boisterous hugs, or unnecessary body checks, or liked how he would put his head on someone’s shoulder. He’d jump on Rex’s back for piggyback rides when he had had too much to drink. Rex was usually so drunk with him he’d oblige.  
  
That brother had made him so happy.  
  
Rex stifled laughter down to a shudder and settled in to sleep, putting one arm around Kallus and the other behind his head. “Not tonight, love. I can’t do it with the cameras, I don’t like them watching us,” he said loudly enough so his brothers could hear he was aware of it.  
  
“Ugh,” Kallus joked, “You never wanna be adventurous.”  
  
Rex was glad he and his friend were close enough to joke about the situation. And that it was dark his friend couldn’t see how he flushed he’d become.  
  
\--

  


Rex dreamt of her again. He pictured her the way she always was in his dreams. Nuzzled against him, her finger lightly tracing the scars on his skin. That was the way he’d found her the first morning, the first time he’d spent the whole night. The first time in his life he had woken when he wanted to. Nothing to do all day but what he liked.  
  
Her face had that smile that was just for him, the one that crept around the corners of her mouth whenever she said those three magical words.  
  
She’d said it many times the night before. Being a being used to reading subtleties, he’d come to even take the smile in the place of the words. An unconscious reflex when she was feeling love for him.  
  
His heart turned to lead when he remembered that, besides his brothers, no one had ever said it to him since.  
  
Rex assured himself that he was just subconsciously processing. Something about sharing a bed with someone had made him think of it, simple as that.  
  
Kallus was asleep beside him. He hadn’t opened his eyes yet, so Rex observed his face. Kallus smiled a little, feeling the breath of Rex’s nose on his face.  
  
Rex stifled giggling. It was light out, so his blushing would show.  
  
Rex couldn’t help but be a little impressed at how easily Kallus adapted to the change in mission plans. He didn’t even seem mad. With his help, Rex was sure they would have everything they needed to know before the weekend. Then back to the Ghost. Back home. Back to normal.  
  
The cameras gave them good reason to keep it chaste. But Rex realized they were over-doing it a bit. Surely they could handle this professionally.  
  
He tried to break the tension with a joke, like something Wolffe would say.  
  
Rex reached up and touched Kallus’ face, and adopted a tone he thought was obviously feigned seriousness, “You’re beautiful.”  
  
Kallus opened his eyes. He didn’t look like he’d taken it as a joke for a second. Then he smiled when he saw Rex smiling as if it was funny.  
  
Once the joking tone was set, he moved over and snuggled in closer and put his head against Rex’s chest again. Alexsandr adopted a tone of what he thought was mock seriousness, “I love you.”  
  
Rex refused to react. But he realized that he couldn’t control the fact that his pulse had started racing. 

  


–

Rishi  
  
Victory came through the door to the Intelligence Service offices of the DQA, “Who’s up for some clearance interrogations? Kothlis just got two new guys.”  
  
The three agents in the room were gathered around the keyboard, while Sh’ehn played and Goran tried out lyrics for the Bo Katan number in their Mandalorian history themed musical comedy play. Briikasar and Nau, The queen's oldest daughters were there to be their test audience. They were mostly being disruptive. They were playing Lux Bonteri and Ahsoka Tano in the Carlac Scene and they had comedic beats they wanted to work out.  
  
Stabbi was checking the daily surveillance report so he could say he was doing something, since Victory was technically the boss.  
  
Long range scanners were bringing back data from the direction of Scarif. Grainy holograms allowed him to count ships in the blockade.  
  
“What is that?” Stabbi saw something round hovering over the planet.  
  
Bri and Nau ran over to see what he was looking at.  
  
“Shebs be’striili!” Bri swore.  
  
The girls’ uncle Victory checked over Stabbi’s shoulder, “It looks like some kind of shield gate. It’s a monster!”  
  
“All the way out here? In our sector?” Sh'ehn asked questions as he ran through some scales trying to find a key he liked.  
  
Victory analyzed, “Seems an expensive place to put a thing, way out here. So we must assume that they want something to be kept hidden. What are they protecting?”  
  
Goran called up a report on the world on his datapad, “It used to be a Republic map vault.”  
  
“Data storage? Who guards storage with that kind of defenses? A shebs be’striili that big costs a fortune. Who has the power to requisition that kind of dataris?” Stabbi shook his head in disbelief. “We need to tell Cody.”  
  
“His comlink is off again,” Goran checked his com device.  
  
“I guess it can wait until ‘eez wersheepfulneez checks in,” Stabbi did his Niki impression.  
  
“The rest of his O.E. team has checked in,” Goran scrolled through the records.  
  
Vic looked at the girls, “He probably went home.”  
  
The girls shook their heads, “No, we’ve just come from there. He hasn’t been back for days.”  
  
“Uh oh.”  
  
–

Kothlis

  


“Yeah, we got some stuff going on here,” Victory’s hologram excused to his brothers in the Bothan sector, “No can do on the intake interviews. Orders from the top, Back to Base.”  
  
It was huge news. Homeworld emergency, all citizens of the Queendom were being called back for purposes of defense. Their off world bases were going to be closed up, temporarily they hoped.  
  
“Okay, we’ll bring the guys with us, is the rest house available to keep them?” ‘Dopey’ asked.  
  
“Chief and them just moved out, so yeah,” Vic nodded.  
  
\--  
  
Rex and Kallus were were brought in to help with the evacuation, which involved packing up anything not screwed down. Droids, Bothans and clones were working on chopping up stolen ships for the most valuable parts. People were busy so they didn’t waste any time talking.  
  
Are we going somewhere else?” Kallus asked. He was worried Zeb wouldn’t know how to follow.  
  
“Yeah, nah,” 'Doc', responded simply.  
  
Kallus seemed not to understand the answer.  
  
Rex had understood 'Doc' perfectly. Their hosts were being deliberately cagey. The three brothers stayed with them. Responsible for their custody, no doubt.  
  
It was actually fine to be back to work. Rex and Kallus were both familiar with relocation protocols, since they both had military experience. Rex respected the efficiency of the operation with Fett pride.  
  
Once he and Kallus were escorted to the evacuation freighter, the three Rothana clones surrounded them.  
  
“Please understand, you have not yet been cleared. We can’t let you know where we’re going,” Rex’s brothers told them.  
  
Rex held up his hands and deadpanned, “Brig or stunning?”  
  
'Dopey' pointed the weapon, “Your choice.”  
  
–  
  
Laneet Purs had been watching the clones from a nearby rooftop. She saw a freighter and about a dozen clones around the chop shop. All well-armed. She quickly calculated that she could handle about six herself if she surprised them. She was a fast shot. But she needed help.  
  
She went back to the main cantina and looked around quickly. Her eyes lit on a gigantic Lasat, his bulging with muscles covered with a beautiful coat of soft purple fur.  
  
“How would you like to make a quick fifty thousand credits?” she asked him, shamelessly low balling him on price.  
  
Zeb had been about to panic. Alexsandr and Rex were nowhere to be found. Zeb didn’t have time for being subjected to capitalism.  
  
“Piss off,” he growled.  
  
“Please, I got a buyer lined up. I just need to capture a couple old army clones…” she didn’t even get to finish.  
  
“Army clones? Where?” Zeb wasn’t even thinking about money.  
  
–  
  
Purs brought Zeb to the rooftop and watched the freighter get packed.  
  
Zeb looked through his scopes and zoomed in on a few of the clones to see if it was anyone he knew. “Have you seen anyone else with them?” he asked the Rodian.  
  
“They might have other people in there. But we only need to snatch a few from the perimeter. I told you, I have a buyer. As many as we can capture alive,” she informed him.  
  
“Your plan is to go over there, snatch a bunch of people and then sell them?” Zeb’s yellow eyes trained on her.  
  
“They’re not my problem,” she didn’t care.  
  
“No, your problems are something else,” Zeb grumbled. “I ain’t here for you, missy, I ain’t in this for your money. I need to find my friends and get off this world.”  
  
“Well, I’m taking some. Otherwise I don’t eat this month. I had to sell my ship so I’ve been stuck here,” she complained. Bounty hunting was a brutal life.  
  
“I have a ship. If you help ME, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. And if these guys have done anything to hurt my friends, I’ll round up ten of them and gift wrap them for you,” Zeb knew how it worked. He’d lived that life once. Before the Ghost. Before Alexsandr.  
  
Laneet weighed her options. Then nodded and shook his hand, “Deal.”  
  
Zeb watched as she snuck down, made her way through camp. She got a look around and came back up.  
  
“I saw my original targets, those guys from the cantina. These guys took them alright. They were loaded on the freighter. Too many guards to stop them.”  
  
They watched the freighter take off.  
  
“Well, now what?” Zeb asked.  
  
Purs pulled out the homing beacon, “I tagged their ship.”  
  
–  
  
Rishi

  


Rex and Kallus awoke in the village rest house. The bed, furniture and floor were made of a light colored wood. All the room fixtures were white. The place looked clean and soothing like a day spa.  
  
“Well, at least this is detainment in style,” Rex sarcasted, “So we just have to sit here, all alone, the two of us…  
  
“Now, Surf, we can just treat it like a relaxing vacation,” Kallus purred. “It might be romantic.”  
  
“I wish I knew what world we’re on,” Rex paced. He realized he’d been groggy when they’d brought them in the night before in their blindfolds.  
  
“No clues?” Kallus sat up.  
  
“Yeah, nah. The drill they referred to is a return to base order. So I bet we’re on the homeworld, whatever that is. Somewhere in the Abrion sector.” Rex was trying hard to see out the screens over the windows. They looked new. Rex could just barely discern that they were on an upper floor. In the thin seam between the screen and window in one place, he could just make out what looked like the town square of a village. Banners in bright colors were hanging in the square and a polished monolith stood at the center, with a massive mound of burnt animal bones in front of it. At least Rex hoped they were animal bones. Effigies made of animal skins stood on poles in a circle.  
  
Across the square was a large residence that looked like it belonged to whoever was in charge. The terrace on which the village rested was surrounded by a steel wall with crenelations. There was substantial security. Guardsmen and droids both.  
  
Beyond the house, Rex could just see into its large garden of trees, shrubs, climbing vines, flower beds, and a wooden gazebo. People were about, but it was hard for him to tell much about them, aside from recognizing the familiar Fett gait. He swore he could see smaller beings with them.  
  
'Doc' came in to give Rex his medication, Rex stood up suddenly. 'Doc' didn’t seem surprised he was trying to see out.  
  
“So, how long are we going to be waiting in here now?” Rex asked.  
  
“You have not yet been given clearance to move freely,” 'Doc' insisted gently.  
  
“But I want to see my brothers. Who else is here, can you at least tell me that?”  
  
“Not permitted. You must remain until the emergency is passed.”  
  
“When will that be?”  
  
“Unsure. Everything is locked down by order of the queen.”  
  
“But if we could just meet the queen, I’m sure I can answer any questions she might have,” Rex pleaded.  
  
“I’ll see what I can do.”  
  
\--  
  
That afternoon tattooed guards came and searched their apartment. Then stood by, on their marks.  
  
“What’s happening?” Rex asked one of them.  
  
A guard announced. “She will meet you now.”  
  
“The queen?” Kallus asked.  
  
Rex expected to be brought to a throne room or something, so he was surprised when the door opened. A crowned figure walked through in a white dress covered in crystals and pearls. Like an apparition materialized out of raindrops.  
  
Rex and Kallus bowed their heads respectfully.  
  
She stood still before them.  
  
“Welcome,” her voice greeted.  
  
Rex looked up, convinced he must be dreaming.


End file.
